“Another day, another dollar”, so the old saying goes… yes, another dollar out of your wallet! Today my “Pay As You Go” Tax installment letter arrived, along with another rather large envelope from our solicitors, which looks equally as intimidating, simply because of the size of the envelope (the contents of which will probably involve some sort of payment, from us, to them, as usual) Don’t you all just love Tax Time (NOT!) And to heap insult on injury (to our hip pocket nerve), the water bill for our Glen Waverley place, in which my favourite eldest daughter and her husband reside, has also arrived. *sigh* I guess it’s getting close to “that time of the year” again. Still, as my mother always used to say facetiously at Tax time, “Well, at least I have the money to pay it!” 🙂 This morning, once again, himself had to play Taxi Driver for my favourite eldest daughter. She couldn’t come over yesterday because she had a uni assignment due in tomorrow (Wednesday) that she had to work on (and she only just finished it off this morning! Which was just as well, because…) she had a dental appointment in Balwyn this morning, which was why Julian was needed – she could have gone there and back by Public Transport, but she had to be home early, because their cleaners were coming (which was why she couldn’t come over today) so I haven’t seen my favourite eldest daughter for two whole weeks! 😦 I haven’t seen my favourite youngest daughter for the same amount of time either, but at least she has a good excuse… she works! 🙂 (though I suppose that going to uni is a good excuse too 😉 ) Ah! I’ve just been told that my Tax has been paid! That’s good – we usually like to get our Tax paid as soon as we receive the notice – we don’t want to run the risk of forgetting it (because we know that Mr. Taxman won’t!) So what did I do this morning… let’s see….

The Guild Bank on Hailol is down to (*gasp! shock! horror!*) double figures, which is most definitely not good – but these days, things just aren’t selling anymore on the Auction House, what with all the materials that those wretched Minions bring in! For instance, a very common low-level “flower” used in the making of health potions, Grieveblossom, used to sell on the Auction House at around 1 gold 50 silver a flower. The Vendor price (in order to keep the shard economy working properly, all prices are, or should be, based on the Vendor price – supposedly the minimum price you could sell at) The Vendor price for Grieveblossom is 4 silver, so if all else fails, you can go to your nearest Vendor (basically any NPC* who sells stuff) and sell your Grieveblossom to them for 4 silver per flower. Naturally, you would expect to get quite a bit more for them on the Auction House…. before Minions were introduced, that is. Minions bring in cheap, low level goods of every type and description, in their tons! The Auction House is simply flooded with them – and quite frankly, the economy is failing! No-one can make any money to buy “better gear” with – those who make the “better gear” can’t sell it – and because they can’t sell their “better gear”, they can’t make any more “better gear” because they can’t afford the materials with which to make it! It’s a nightmare, but typical of Governments, real ones or virtual ones, the world over. They meddle with the economy, and all of a sudden people find themselves going to Hell in a hand basket, because they don’t have enough money to catch a train and take the scenic route! You know how much some stupid and desperate people were selling their Grieveblossom for on the Auction House this morning? 1 (one) silver! They could have sold them at 4 silver per blossom to the Vendor standing just across the lane from the Auction House, but no… they were trying to sell them for 1 silver each – 3 silvers less than the Vendor price! And guess what?! No-one was buying! Everyone’s Minions are bringing them in more of these sorts of things than they can use… and that’s why I had to sell four stacks (one stack = 99 items) of Grieveblossom to the nice Vendor man standing right across the way from the nice Auction man! And it’s the same with just about everything. Nothing is selling. Yeah, so I spent most of the morning putting all my stacks, and Bind On Equip** gear back on the Auction House… for the third (or is it the fourth? I fergit!) time… As I said… the economy is totally wrecked.

This afternoon I worked on my new Bookmarks wallpaper idea… I tell you, those ruddy styles are starting to give me a headache! I haven’t really progressed much further with the project, but what I have managed to get done does look nice… I suppose there are ways of putting photos and such up on one’s blog? I’m not sure how – I guess I’ll just have to look into it… (Ahhh! I just spotted a roll-up window to the right of the page – it says “Format” on the top, and then there’s a list of things below it – the bottom most one of which is labeled “Image”, so I suppose that might have something to do with it! I’ll have a look later…)

Weigh-in this morning. Was weird! I got on the scales, and they said 95.3kg. exactly the same as yesterday – I was bitterly disappointed – I was so hoping to go down… so I hopped off, and hopped back on again. No cheating, but this time it read 95.1kg. Under himself’s watchful eyes, I again hopped off, and hopped back on, No cheating, and it still said 95.1kg, so we settled for that! 🙂 Himself has a strange problem with his scales – he can get on and off them, three or four times in a row, and register a different weight each time – the weights he ends up with can vary by up to half a kilo at a time (example: 85.8kg, 85.1kg, 86.4kg, and 84.6kg, all in the space of about 2 minutes!) in other words, much more than a person should or would be able to vary, in such a small space of time. I wonder if his scales need new batteries?

So here I am – it’s almost time for my evening “Walkies” 🙂 Please feel free to drop by again tomorrow night, to find out how many items of mine sold over night on the Auction House (probably none!) and how many other stacks of non-sellables (thanks to the Minions!) I had to sell at Vendor prices… See if I’ve made any progress with the Bookmarks wallpaper and those pesky little styles… and what happened when I hopped on the scales in the morning. I seem to be doing an awful lot of writing these days – not only this blog, but nightly installments to emails, which I send off every day or so – just as well my fingernails are filed down so much (but only another week or so and I should be able to get back to my pretty nail polishes! 🙂 ) So that’s about it from me for tonight – I look forward to seeing you all here again tomorrow night – but until then, bee good, Watch out! You’ll spill the coffee! – but above all…. stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

* NPC =  Non Player Character – a character who is not being played by a real person – a scripted part of the game
** Bind On Equip = Once you use it, in any way, shape, or form, it becomes “bound” to you – this means that you can no longer sell it for a profit on the Auction House, you can only sell it to a Vendor, or to make other materials from it by destroying it.

Mondays are always interesting days – the beginning of the week, the beginning of – who knows what may follow? 🙂 Unfortunately, this particular Monday wasn’t one of those “who knows what lies in store?” days, it was another one of those dull, boring, “ho-hum, what’ll I do today” sort of days. I wasn’t having my hair done, and nothing else exciting was happening, so, guess what I did do? Yup, you got it in one! I Rifted! What else does a bored housewife do on a dull day? I also mucked around a bit with my new Bookmarks wallpaper – a lovely, wintry, grey, marbled background – in keeping with my favourite season, and my current mood. It’s quite interesting, creating styles (used in Photoshop, a “style” is a preset comprised of several different effects to “cover” and change the appearance of your text or image(s) with a single mouse click) in pewters, steel, and silver. These days, gold styles are fairly easy to create, but well do I remember my early years in graphics, striving to create a “real” gold colour and texture, before the days of layers and styles! Talk about the ‘Agony and the Ecstasy’! These days, a passable gold colour is pretty easy to replicate – it’s not quite so easy to create a decent silver or pewter colour from scratch, and get the highlights “just right”! Still, I think I did passably well… I’ll let you know when I finish the project, and, if it’s good enough, I might even (attempt to) introduce the pewter theme on the blog. The thing is, you create a style to work the way you want, and look the way you want, on a particular element (either text or image) that is a certain size, and a certain shape, or in the case of text, a certain font. In other words, you “tailor fit” that style to that element. When you translate that style to something else – a different size or shape image, or a different font, it quite often looks completely different – nothing at all like the original – so you have to tinker with it, and adjust it here, there, and somewhere else. Sometimes you succeed in getting it to look like the “original” on the new element (that’s called a “fluke” 😉 ) sometimes you don’t, and all you can do is fling up your hands in despair and start again from scratch. And sometimes, very occasionally, you’ll create something a lot better than the original (and that’s called “serendipity”! 🙂 ) And you can bet your bottom dollar that the “better than the original” one won’t work properly on any other element than the one you created it for! My style folder is overflowing with different versions of the same style, created by yours truly, with each one only working properly on one particular element that I’ve never needed to use since! But it’s fun 🙂

After lunch today himself and I hit the Dusken road again, and made it to level 50! This used to be a Really Big Deal, back in the days when levels were capped at 50, but even today it’s a worthy Milestone to reach – it’s a Rite of Passage from “childhood” (spotty faced adolescent quester) to “adult” (big, strong, mature, wise and confident quester) There’s even a special “Ceremony”, called a “Chronicle” to mark the Grand Occasion, where you go back to your home city, everyone jumps up and down, clapping and cheering you, they’ve got a great big party laid out for you in the town square, and you have bestowed upon you some spiffy new abilities, etc., etc… And then (da-dada-daaaa!) the light dims, and just like in Sleeping Beauty, the Wicked Witch that you forgot to invite to the party appears with her evil pet dragons (no, the Witch’s name is not Daenerys!) – she gives an evil cackle, and sets them loose! “Eat them, my pretties!”, she screams (she doesn’t really – that was just a theatrical effect I put in) You have to defeat them all, and you have to do it solo – no groups or teams allowed! But you don’t have to do that part, and that’s where we usually leave the “Chronicle”. We went back to Dusken, did another couple of quests, and called it a day! 🙂 Good fun, especially not having to do the Chronicle end bit! 😉 (yes, I’m a devout coward!)

Weigh-in this morning. I knew that going down so far in one foul swoop yesterday wasn’t a good idea, but would my body listen to me? Well, it never has before, so why should it have started yesterday? I did go up – only one point, to 95.3kg – but it was up, and not down, so I’m not pleased… The thing is though, the really big bounce up will probably come tomorrow morning. So again, I’m not looking forward to getting on the scales!

I should be seeing my favourite eldest daughter tomorrow, but she’s not coming because their cleaners will be there 😦 so I won’t see her until next week. I’ve spent an awful lot of time today writing – not this blog, but letters… I was still writing this afternoon before we started Rifting, and I looked up to say something to himself, and only a little squeak came out! My throat has been feeling sort of thick and phlegmy for the past few days, and my nose has been very runny – I just put it down to a bit of Hay Fever, but when only a squeak came out this afternoon, I realised I’d lost my voice. Flipper likes to parade around meowing from time to time, and I always meow right back at her – she seems to both like, and expect it. This morning she was meowling, as usual, and I tried to echo her – but I couldn’t quite get the right pitch. Do you know, she then “ran me through” a series of differently pitched meows, none of which I could match, and she gave an annoyed little “meeouw”, as if to say “I give up!” and stalked off, disgruntled. Well, that’s what I felt this afternoon – speaking “normally”, I kept fading in and out – with more “outs” than “ins”! And the louder I tried to talk, the squeakier I got. I’ve only lost my voice once before, when the kids were little more than toddlers – they thought it was hilarious! Mummy couldn’t yell at them! 🙂 Trying to tell them “Be quiet! It’s not funny!” came out more as a squeaky whisper Julian thought it was funny too, this afternoon! *pout* Luckily, my voice seems to be fairly much back to normal tonight – I hope it stays like that, too! 🙂 I don’t like not being able to complain! 😉 So, anyway, that was my day that was – not much more to tell you, except to tell you to call in again tomorrow night, and I’ll tell you how the graphics are going, what’s happening in the wonderful land of Telara, and if my weight has bounced up over the 95kg mark (it had better not have!) So until then, bee good, don’t have that second slice of chocolate cake. and above all…. stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Well, here it is, the Sunday after the Saturday before… the only real difference is that himself and I started off in Telara, and ended up in Dusken! After we both turned level 49 on Ember Isle, we found that the Lycini ambassador in Meridian was only too happy to send us off to fight in either Dusken or Brevane – so we went… to Dusken 🙂 First, though, we had to establish a base of operations (so to speak) closer to the two areas because Meridian, although being the Capital city of the Defiants, only has Skill Trainers who can train up to level 300 (Masters level) in all the skills – to train up to a higher level (Grand Master and Savant) you need to go to Tempest Bay, the jumping off point for Dusken and Brevane. So, I’d just reached 300 in Foraging, and was sitting on 280 in Butchering – and himself was getting very close to 300 in both Mining and Butchering, so we took ourselves off to Tempest Bay and “Hearthed” ourselves there (“Hearthed” – a left-over term from our days playing World of Warcraft, where using a magic stone to transport you back to your point of origin was called “Hearthing” – I think it stems from the old-fashioned term for your dwelling place –  your “hearth and home”) Then we went back to the Lycini ambassador in Meridian, said that we were ready to do our bit for – er – King and Country? I don’t think there is a “king” anywhere in the game?! There is a Queen, but she doesn’t really figure in the game much – it’s really very non-political, despite all of the different factions competing for your services! We arrived in the Kingdom of Pelladane (so! I guess there must be a king there somewhere, after all! The Queen was standing around giving orders when we arrived, too! 🙂 ) and we got our first taste of Dusken flora and fauna. I was quite surprised! The mobs there were all level 50 – the mobs we’d just been dealing with on Ember Isle were level 52, and level 52 Elites! Mind you, this is the Dusken “starting out, please don’t feed our wildlife your fingers and heads” area – we know from experience that they’ll get tougher! We played until about 5 o’clock, then went back to Tempest Bay and dusted down. I did a few editing bits to a long(ish) email that I’m writing to my friend, and messed around with a new idea for my Bookmarks page, and then went off for my evening Stair Walk (which reminds me – where’s my cup of coffee?!) All in all, it was a good day rampaging through the tropical wilds of Ember Isle, and frolicking on the beaches at Ferric Harbor. We did die a couple of times on Ember Isle, when we stupidly decided to vanquish a small Invasion force on our own. Normally it’s a mere bagatelle, and the two of us can polish them off with no trouble. This, unfortunately, was an Invasion force made up of level 52 Elites, which fact we didn’t realise until it was far too late, and they were killing us very quickly indeed! Himself went down first – I still hadn’t realised that they were Elites – but things were going from “worse” to “dire”, and I was lucky enough to find my “Feign Death” (playing possum) hot key, just in the nick of time. I was what is technically called “slivered” – that is, I had a teeny “sliver” of life left in me. Later on, I wasn’t so lucky! We’d managed to get ourselves a little too close to another Elite Invasion force, and unfortunately they noticed us and set upon us with wild abandon. I’d moved my “Feign Death” hot key to a “more easily reached in a hurry” one, so I pressed it, and confidently collapsed at the feet of the Invasion Boss, going “Aaarrggghh!”, and spurting blood most realistically! (I was quite proud of my performance! I reckon they should give me an Oscar! 😉 ) But you see, the whole trick to “Playing Possum” successfully is to lie absolutely still! You freeze! You hold your breath! You’re supposed to look dead! And what did I do? I swiveled around to see which way they were going, and promptly stood up! Do you think they noticed me? The “Feign Death” function has a cool down cycle, and you can’t press it again for a few seconds… Oh, they noticed me alright! I was dead “dead” before I could say “Oh bother“!! I was not impressed with myself! 🙂 Ah well, these things do happen from time to time… One thing that I had forgotten, though, was just how s-l-o-w the haul from level 45 to level 50 is! We were lucky to go up a level today…

Weigh-in this morning. Well, it was spectacular, that’s fer sure! I went from 95.7kg to 95.2kg! Five points! That’s a very big drop! And though very gratifying, I really wish that it hadn’t (been such a big drop) I’d much rather go down in increments of two… or even one point – the more you go down in one er… lot (or whatever) the more you’re – not just likely to, but certain-sure to – bounce back up again the next day, and/or the day after that! Now I don’t want to get on the scales in the morning – I bet I’ll have bounced back to around something like 95.8kg again! 😦

And as for tomorrow, well… I’m not having my hair done this week – I’m going to have to rough it on my own for a while, I’m afraid, so it looks like more of my usual fare. Stair Walks, Rift, and graphics – same old, same old. If I can work up the enthusiasm to research rug shops, we may go out on Tuesday looking for a rug for the lounge room. It’d be good to get it before the coffee table arrives on Thursday – it’s always a headache trying to put a large rug down under existing furniture – and it won’t be as easy to move this new coffee table around as the old coffee table was… I mean, is… The old coffee table has eighteen? (I think there are 18?) Sienese tiles set out under the glass. I’m pretty sure they’re just loose under the glass, otherwise Mum wouldn’t have been able to crack one when she dropped something heavy on the table. Anyway, the table is rather dilapidated and scruffy (and it’s not very big, which is why I wanted a new one) but the tiles I most definitely must keep. They came out from Italy with us when I was five and a half years old (no, I won’t tell you what year it was! 😉 ) and they represent all of the contrade (small territorial districts) from in and around Siena, in Tuscany (where we’re from) The Palio is a very famous bare back horse race, held twice a year in the central square in Siena. The race has its roots in medieval times and I actually got to see it, in all its finery – one of my cousins was actually chosen to be one of the flag bearers 🙂 Anyway, that’s why I absolutely have to keep those tiles – I want to have them framed in three plaques, to hang on the wall we don’t have yet. I know if you visit the link above, you’ll read that there are 17 contrade – our last tile is a different, it looks like a rhino, or something… And on that somewhat contentious note, I shall bid you all a fond “buona notte” until tomorrow night, with a stern admonishment to bee good, don’t squash that loaf of bread, and above all… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Today’s a sort of “Red Letter Day” for me, I suppose – I deleted my Facebook account. And, I might add, it’s not the first time I’ve deleted a Facebook account. Many years ago, when Facebook was young and charming, I refused to join it. I thought it was a gross waste of time, it upset a whole lot of people who probably didn’t deserve to be upset, and in short, I avoided it like the plague. First Julian got himself a Facebook account. Then Lisa, quickly followed by Kate, got accounts. I still refused. I refused for years!  Slowly and steadily, however, even I got sucked in, and I got myself a Facebook account. It was actually pretty boring – I’m not what you’d call a “social butterfly” – the number of friends I have you could count on the fingers of one hand, even if you’d lost a few of them to frostbite! I only logged on now and then anyway – about once a month, if that. Later on, new rules, restrictions, and privacy constraints – which I neither liked nor needed – came into being, and I closed my account in disgust. A couple? Several? years later, I created the “Clara Bennetts” account – and once again, I only logged on maybe once a month – if that. It was basically just to keep up with the kids, though that wasn’t strictly necessary anyway, as (a) we’re a very close-knit family and pretty much stay in constant touch with eachother, and (b) Julian still has his account, and if there’s anything I should know, or photos or links that I might be interested in, he’ll tell me, and I’ll scoot my chair across the room and read over his shoulder. This time though, I doubt very much that I’ll ever get another Facebook account. It does have its good points – I found my fantastic hairdresser, whom I can’t recommend highly enough (you know, he can perform miracles! he can even get my hair to look human!) – thank you Josh! 🙂 I’ve found fascinating sites, and got myself very interested in pigeon genetics, amongst other things, and had many, many wonderful and interesting chats there, which I already miss more than I can possibly say. But as far as I’m concerned, the bad parts outweigh the good parts, and from now on I think I’ll stick to the phone, and/or email, if I want to catch up with someone. I think I’ll change the Facebook link on my Bookmarks page to Brusheezy, which is a really great site for all Photoshop resources – they have really, really good quality Freebies, as well as their Premium section, which, while not “free”, isn’t all that expensive, either. I use it quite a lot (I was there today, for instance, looking for free patterns to use to make Styles with – Styles, I might add, that I used to create that new header you see at the top of the page! 🙂 )

This morning though, I did a fair bit of Rifting – I decided not to advance Asima to level 40 just yet – at the moment I’m working on the new girl, Chrysanthemum – I think I’ll take her to level 40 first… I don’t really know how, or why it happens – but some characters you just seem to have a better connection with than others – which is nonsensical – because they’re all me! How can I like some better than others? I mean, it’s one thing if I have trouble playing a male character – I am, after all, a female – but the other girls? I have the strangest feeling that even with her sitting at level 20, I’m probably going to decide to “re-roll” Asima – and I just don’t know why! (time for my evening Stair Walk – I spent too much time trying to get that wretched header right! grrr! – Back later…) (Back again – I really ought to remember to time myself – Himself says I take “about five to six minutes”…) Now, where was I? Oh I remember, talking about liking some characters more than others… Tomorrow, of course, is Sunday, and himself and I will be rollicking and rolling around Telara – Ember Isle, I think? (unless we decide to run some more Dungeons and/or Instances, like we did last time? Hmmm? *sly look*) However, as soon as we get our breadcrumb to Brevane or Dusken, I suggest we head for there. There is method in my madness suggesting that we vacate Ember Isle fairly quickly – I’m thinking of our Foraging, Butchering, and Mining. Ember Isle is largely still “Telaran” topography – pretty much following on from Shimmersand. Brevane and Dusken, however, have a completely new set of mines, animals, and herbage to play with. Once we get our Skill levels high enough to utilise on the new landmasses, I think we ought to go for it. Last time, if I’m not mistaken, we stuck to mostly Brevane, because it had a better “ambiance”, but from looking at Jademoss’s maps, I don’t think we finished it – were we too gung-ho to get to the Water Plane, or something? And I know it’s not as “pretty”, but should we do Dusken this time around? Food for thought… 🙂 This time round though, I want to finish off, and completely map out, both Dusken and Brevane!

Weigh-in this morning was only marginally better than yesterday – down another one point, to 95.7kg. Oh well, only another couple of days, and hopefully those fluid retainers will be completely out of my system (I wonder how long a half-life they have?) I’m starting to get antsy again – I’m taking too long to lose each kilo… Perhaps I will put in that extra Stair Walk on my way back down to the Den after all…. As I always say: “Whatever it takes!”

So… tomorrow we’ll be Rifting, for most of the day – but I can’t tell you anything about that until tomorrow night though 🙂 😉 Oh, and I forgot to tell you! I didn’t go shopping today because first we have to Google some rug shops, and find out exactly where they are…  (yes, I know they’re a dime a dozen – all over the place – but if I don’t look them up first, we’ll end up driving around for hours and not find a single one! Isn’t that the way it usually goes? 😉 ) Secondly, we don’t have to go shopping for a coffee table, after all! Julian still had a photo of the coffee table that went with the entertainment unit and side tables that we got, not that long ago… At the time, he thought that the coffee table was a bit too big, but on second consideration, I decided that it wasn’t too big at all! It was just about the size I’d had in mind.. and so he went in and ordered one this morning. It’ll be delivered on Thursday morning. It’s not on casters, but it’s got good, solid legs that we should be able to bung some on easily enough… I’m rather glad that I didn’t have to go out shopping today – I just wasn’t in the mood for it. I hope I’m not coming down with something – me not wanting to go out shopping borders on pure science fiction! And that’s about it from me for tonight – dew drop inn again tomorrow night to hear about all our adventures – both in, and out of, Telara! 🙂 How many times will we have died? (lots! If we leave Ember Isle and go on to Brevane or Dusken!) Will my weight have gone up or down? Or will it be boringly the same? Will I have researched any rug shops? (probably not! 🙂 ) The answers to all those questions, plus answers to lots of other much more trivial, but none-the-less intriguing questions, will be waiting for you all – right here, on the same (but possibly differently coloured!) blog channel! So until then, once more I shall bid you to bee good, take a walk on the wild side, and above all…. stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Well, here I am, finally – it’s almost a quarter past four, and I should be starting to think about doing my evening walk… I’m exhausted though! Remember I said I had another 38 Dimension boxes to unpack and sort, last night? Well, another two arrived with the Minions this morning! So that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing all day – unpacking [*mumble*] boxes, and trying to squish everything into a bank that has three bag spots left, and which I can’t use. “Why can’t you use them?” I hear you ask. I’m glad you asked! 🙂 It’s simple, really – I can’t afford to unlock the bag spots! The next one is going to cost 43 platinum, and their price increases exponentially… I can’t get the money out of the Guild Bank, either, as I’ve been steadily draining it to find money to buy room for all these Dimension items… Oh dear… I can “shuffle” the Minion Adventure Cards (pick a card – any card – and it’ll tell you what sort of Adventure your Minion(s) will be sent off on, and what sort of goodies he or she is likely to come back with) and so attempt to by-pass the Dimension yielding Adventure Cards, but that, too, costs either platinum or Credits. And I reckon that if I buy any more Credits this month without just cause, our poor, long-suffering Julian will experience much grief and upset over our (real time) bank account, and the money therein bleeding out (not into the grouting, thank heavens! 😉 ) rather rapidly! Poor Rubyfox, our lovely Dimension Damoiselle, has been left with only one empty bag for her shopping expeditions! 😉  In my lunchtime break I got himself to induct the young lady that I had shuffled over to Hailol last night, into the Guild. I was going to bring money over with her, along with her very own water breathing necklace, and the second key to the “Anywhere” Dimension – alas, I had set my heart on bringing her, but she’s only level 22 – and as you can only travel with three times your level in platinum, she was only able to bring sixty six bars of platinum with her 😦 It’ll have to do, and she’ll have to share the water breathing necklace as well! Poor Chrysanthemum! Never mind, she’ll be able to get by… Of course, having decided to bring Chrysanthemum over, I then had two girls with names beginning with “C” – Crystalsong and Chrysanthemum. I couldn’t have that, so Crystalsong is now called Blueonyx. You know, I didn’t know that you can actually get Blue Onyx? I thought it was pretty much a black stone – but you can, and it’s really lovely – apparently it’s one of Leo’s birthstones (July 23 – August 22), and is in high demand (!?!) for resolving confusions, enhancing self-mastery, guidance, absorbing energy, protection from negative forces, and letting go of old beliefs (and I didn’t even know that blue onyx existed before today! Shame on me! I know just about all the other birthstones and their properties…) So there you go – I have a Rift character named after what I thought was a “pretend” stone.

I also worked on my graphics today – putting together/experimenting with new shapes and colours – elements for a different header. It’s not even nearly finished yet – I’ve only just created the Autumn symbol icon – the main frame in the centre is going to be a problem though because the frame doesn’t stretch evenly, so I’m having to improvise by cutting the frame in half, dragging half the frame further out, and then copying a small section of the top leaves, and sticking it on to… where it was copied from. Copying the copy, reversing it, and sticking it on to the other half of the frame – if I copy and paste enough leafy “sprigs” to each side, they’ll meet up in the middle, and I’ll have a long enough frame that isn’t stretched out of proportion. But it’s a headache to do – getting in all close and personal-like, finding the right place to copy a piece of frame so that it’ll look seamless when attached to the piece it’s been copied from – it’s like having to do all “the little fiddly bits around the fjords” (with apologies to Slartibartfast – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) So it’s going to take a while…

Weigh-in this morning was a little more encouraging – thank heavens I took the last of those wretched pills this morning (until next time! *gloom*) – however, I went down to 95.8kg, and I was moderately pleased 🙂 I’ll probably see-saw around a bit until all the fluid retainers are out of my system, but hopefully I’ll start losing a bit more now…

The situation that was causing me so much angst last night has been resolved, I think (hope?) – not as I would have liked, however it was my own impatience and paranoia that made the bed, and now I have to lie in it. Hopefully all is not totally lost, and that time will erode away the sharpest edges of the pain I caused to both of us. ‘Nuff said – we move on.

I think we’re going rug and/or coffee table hunting tomorrow – which’ll be good. I have no idea where to go for rugs – anyone got any suggestions? (polite ones only, please!) I suppose I should start Googling, but I’d rather get this finished… As for coffee tables, I don’t think that the sort I want exists! It should be fairly large… and squarish, rather than rectangular. It has to be on casters, and have (sensible sized) drawers on two sides, almost down to the floor (so there are no coffee table legs visible around the table) and magazine or book “alcoves” on the other two sides…. Oh, and it should be made in something similar to Tasmanian Oak. I have yet to find one, despite a fair amount of searching. I don’t like the ridiculously popular “Retro” look (I grew up with it when it was being called “Modern”, not “Retro”, and I didn’t like it then!), or the scruffy and dilapidated “Distressed” look – “distressed, because it’s on its way to the tip” would be a better description for it! So, we’ll “pound the pavement” (or Google, whichever comes first! 😉 ) and see what we can find. So drop by again tomorrow night, and find out if we saw any suitable rugs – and if we bought one. I doubt very much that we’ll find the coffee table that I want (as I said before – I’m pretty sure it doesn’t exist, except in my imagination!) but if we do find it, you’ll be the first to know! 🙂 You’ll also find out what my weight decides to do tomorrow morning – one thing I can tell you for sure, though, is that it’ll either be up, or down, or boringly the same. And that’s about it from me for tonight – so until tomorrow night, bee good, don’t forget to water the house plants, and above all…. stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Calm down, it’s all right! It’s not a new blog template, it’s exactly the same as it was before – I’ve just changed the colours a little bit. It’ll be all fixed once I’ve finished writing tonight’s episode installment entry! 🙂 I decided that I wanted to see my text in black, on a lighter background for a change – I’m getting tired of the pale coloured text on the darker background. So this is the “black” text, and that’s the “lighter” colour. The header will be fixed – hopefully this evening. And at least I can see my keyboard now that himself has fixed my “glare” problem. You see, I don’t touch-type – I have to look at the keyboard in order to see what I’m typing, and I only look up at the screen at the end of a sentence, or paragraph (whichever comes first) There’s strip lighting at the back of the desk area where I sit, and it was reflecting on the top couple of rows of my keyboard – so that I couldn’t tell the difference between a “T” and a “Y”, or an “E” and an “R”, and I found I was spending more time backspacing and correcting typos than I was actually writing! However, clever little engineer that he is, Julian has rigged up a colour co-ordinated type of curtain, which still lets through the light, but shades the top rows of my keyboard! It’s much more betterer now!! Well, I spent the morning doing what I said I’d do – unpacking boxes of Dimension items and sorting them out. I don’t expect many of you to remember an old ad, many years ago, when the artist, Pro Hart, decides to “paint” a picture in the middle of the lounge room floor, using a cake, whipped cream, chocolate sauce, and other various edible, sweet, and sticky substances. The resulting picture of a butterfly (or was it a dragon-fly? It was hard to tell!) wasn’t half bad, actually – it was a shame that it was on the floor, and not on a canvas… and then the cleaning lady comes in, and says, in an Australian version of an Italian accent, “Oh! Mr Hart! what a mess!”* well, that’s exactly what my bank and my bags looked like, after I’d unpacked all those boxes of Dimension items, and sorted them roughly into categories. I’ve done about 50 boxes, I think, but I still have another 38 to go! (I did tell you that it was a mammoth job!) I had a break at lunch time, and then himself decided that he wanted to run some dungeons (they’re called “instances” now, apparently) but because we’re not terribly conversant with these areas, we chose to first try a much lower level of dungeon, in Brevane. I mean, we were level 62 and 65 – we’d be able to knock just about any level 58 Boss down, no problemo, right?! Wrong! Oh, so horribly, woefully wrong! We were almost “one-shotted” (killed with one blow!). We died. A couple of times each. It was embarrassing! (I’m still blushing with shame!) So we turned tail, and ran for our lives… I was totally nonplussed – why were we so abysmally outclassed, when we so clearly out-leveled them? Then himself tells me that it was a five man dungeon! That means that you need at least five people to get through it, with those five people being really experienced dungeon runners, equipped with the best armor and weaponry that platinum can buy – honestly, the two of us never stood an ice block’s chance in hell! So we went off to Ember Isle (only slightly lower level than Brevane), and we did manage to get through that one fairly easily. Then he remembered an instance on Tempest Isle – so we went and tried that… with equally disastrous results! We had to run around in funny robot-like armor that had special in-built weapons that we were to use against a horde of insect like mobs… and I reckon that they were pretty woeful – the “cool down” (the time you have to wait before you can use the weapon again after firing it) on the most important ones was impossibly long, and when you can’t use the weapons provided because you’re waiting for them to become usable again – you die! So we did. Die. A lot. We got out of that one quick smart, too… and that’s where we left it. I think we’re going to have to get much more betterer gear and weapons, before we can have another shot at doing dungeons/instances – whatever they’re calling them this week 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t good. I went up one point, to 96.1kg. Tomorrow is my last dose of those wretched tablets – thank goodness! Unfortunately it’s going to take me about three days to get them out of my system – but hopefully the weight should start going down properly after that. “Hopefully” being the key word there! I wasn’t pleased – in fact I burst into tears – not because of the weight gain – that was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’m pretty fragile emotionally at the moment – I’m having a lot of problems with someone at the moment, and I just don’t know how to handle it anymore. They won’t be honest enough with me to tell me what’s really going on, in fact, they won’t talk to me at all. Julian will tell me I shouldn’t have written that – but I don’t care. I’m hurting, and I don’t care who knows it.

So anyway, it’s five o’clock, and almost time for my evening Stair Walk. Tomorrow’s Friday, the end of the week, and hopefully I’ll find some answers tomorrow night – because I don’t know how much longer I can take this. But life stumbles blindly along, I guess. I’m not sure what’s happening chez nous tomorrow – probably not a lot though. Tonight I’ll try to get the blog header updated, and I’ll probably get on to the last 38 boxes of Dimension items tomorrow morning – if I can find anywhere to store the items… Thinks: I “shuffled” another girl over from Laethys today – and I gave her the second key to the Anywhere Dimension to bring with her. I can unpack the boxes in the Dimension, and put them all down in their groups then and there… that just might work! Hmmm! 🙂 I’ve picked up four Dimension keys from the boxes, too – not wonderful Dimensions that everyone’s breaking their necks to be able to afford, but fairly good ones… which I might make use of – two of the keys are duplicates, so I’ll probably sell one of them – goodness knows, the Guild Bank desperately needs the money!  And that’s about it from me for tonight – but tune in again, and you’ll find the answers to all of your questions (…most of them, anyway… well, would you believe some of them, then?!) right here, tomorrow night! So until then, bee good, don’t forget to brush your teeth, and above all… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*It was a dragonfly! I actually found the ad, if you’d like to have a look at it 🙂

Another reasonably busy day in Telara this morning. I did get Satai up to level 40 (with a little help from some experience boosting potions – just to hurry the job along a bit 😉 ) because I was in a bit of a rush – I’m determined to get all those Dimension boxes and items finally sorted out, you see. Oh, the apartment Window Washers were here this morning – just as well it wasn’t as wet as it was yesterday! They only do the outside of the windows – they rappel down the outside of the building, washing the windows as they go (they can have that job on their own! I hate heights!) but to do that they have to get onto the roof. I suppose I never gave a thought as to how, or which way they’d get up onto the roof (probably because I never think of the window washers at all, unless himself tells me that “the window washers will be here”, and I make a mental note to myself not to exit the bathroom before I get dressed!) so I suppose that I can be forgiven for being a trifle startled to see strange men with ropes on the fire escape stairs, half way up to the next floor, when I was on my way to my pre-breakfast Stair Walk. I propped open the fire escape door with my book, as usual, and looked up at the men (who hadn’t even noticed me! Hmph!) but I thought – ‘they don’t know I’m here – I hope they don’t see the book propping the door open and decide that it poses a security risk and remove it!’ (highly unlikely! If they hadn’t noticed me, I think they’d be very unlikely to notice a small book propping the door open!) But just to be on the safe side, I called out to them ‘Excuse me! Please don’t move the book holding the door open – I’m exercising on the stairs and if you take it away, I won’t be able to get back inside!” They both jumped (they really hadn’t noticed that I was there!) one of them grunted some sort of confirmatory noise at me, and they got back to their rope sorting, while I, very self-consciously, started down the stairs, counting a lot more quietly than usual, as I went…. I count aloud as I go down (and up) the stairs, first in Italian, then French, and lastly English… because (a) it echos a lot in the stair well, and people are much more likely to realise that someone’s on the stairs, and might need the door-propping-open-book left where it is, and (b) it helps me keep track of which floor I’m on, as none of the floors (both stair and lift side!) display a floor number! The apartment doors have numbers on them, and the first number stands for the floor number, f’rinstance, 502, our apartment, is apartment 2 on the fifth floor, and so on. (I’ve just been for my afternoon Stair Walk – the window washers must still be here, because the stair well lights were on [they’re those “push the button to turn the light on” type – they don’t stay on for long] and there was equipment and ropes sitting on the next landing up…) So I Rifted until I got Satai up to level 40, then took her home and dusted her down. Then I went looking for someone with as few things in their bank as possible – Rubyfox drew the short straw, so she’s “it” – the Dimension Damoiselle – from now on, all things pertaining to Dimensions go to her! (Julian, take note, if you’re ever playing in Hailol!) I’ve started taking the boxes out of the Guild Bank for her to unpack… so far I’ve opened up over twenty boxes, and nothing as yet has been duplicated! These are all smaller and less valuable boxes, and each one held, on average, nine items! (can you see what I’m starting to get worried about?) I’ve had one of Julian’s characters “ferry” over a Dimension key from Laethys for me – the key is for a Dimension called “Anywhere”, and it’s the largest Dimension there is. It’s basically just an enormous flat, sandy plain. No hills, no grass, no trees, no nothing – so you can turn it into any sort of landscape you want. Elizandra, one of my girls on Laethys, can make keys for that Dimension (and in fact can make keys to any Dimension!) and I’m really thinking that I should have brought more than just one key to Anywhere across – I have a sneaking suspicion I’m going to need as many as I can get! Well, Rubyfox is also a Dreamweaver – they make Dimension items, and…. keys! I shall just have to level her up until she can make Anywhere keys! I know I should keep on unpacking the boxes, and I am really curious to know what’s inside the bigger, more valuable boxes… but… knowing me, I’ll probably just grab the next one on the list to level 40, and go back to leveling everyone up 🙂 *sigh*

Weigh-in this morning. A trifle better… though not as good as I would have liked… I went down 2 points to 96.0kg, which was good, but it’s getting to the stage where I’m almost too frightened to get on the scales in the morning, for fear of going up. Yes, I know it’s stupid, and yes I know that weight can fluctuate wildly, and that as long as the general trend is downwards, it doesn’t matter a hill of beans if I go up a little, or a lot. Intellectually, I know all that… but it’s a different matter when one’s standing on the scales and one sees an increase in yesterday’s readings, one’s first impulse is to burst into blubbery tears of disappointment and chagrin! Ah well, let’s see what tomorrow’s weigh-in brings! Hand me my Peril Sensitive Sunglasses, Beulah! 🙂

So that’s where I’m at today – I have no idea what’s happening tomorrow – actually, I do know one thing that’s happening tomorrow! Something I forgot to do today! Ring and book the Podiatrist for sometime next Monday or Tuesday, for Lee and me! I’m quite cross with myself – I meant to ring today… but I clean forgot. However, what to do tomorrow? Rift? (as in leveling the next victim to 40?) Dimensioning? (unpacking more boxes?) Graphic-ing? (experimenting with other colours for the blog) I had a look at my nails this morning, to see if they were long enough to paint yet. They’re not. That stupid thumb nail that kept snagging on everything, is not growing (fast enough), and still snags occasionally on sheer fabric, no matter how much I file it down! My poor neglected bottle of Chrome Violet nail polish continues to sit on the bathroom bench, gazing at me reproachfully with no eyes… Of course, with my nails filed down so severely, typing is a lot quicker and easier! So what you lose on the roundabouts, you gain on the swings? Summat like that, anyhoo! 🙂 Oh, here’s another ‘brain teaser’ for you: “Brothers and sisters have I none! Yet this man’s father is my father’s son!” – who is the speaker talking about? 🙂 And on that note, I shall bid you all to once again drop in tomorrow night and see what’s happening chez nous – will my weight be up, down, or stay boringly the same? Will I have Rifted, or Dimensioned? Have I remembered to book an appointment with the Podiatrist, for Lee and me? And did I abandon all things Telaran, and do some graphic work instead? Find out tomorrow night, right here in this blog! (I can guarantee that you won’t find these things out any cheaper anywhere else! 😉 ) So until then, bee good, stop eating that candy, and above all…. stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

Well?! Well!? What do you think of it? My new header, with the seasonal icons on it? Do you like it? Hate it? Don’t give a stuff?! 🙂 Anyway, I’ll still be experimenting with different shapes and styles… so if you don’t like this one, the next one may be more to your liking(s) This morning, because himself had to play Taxi Driver for my favourite eldest daughter once more, I had the morning to myself (for once!) and because I’d been clever enough to do this header last night, I had the whole day (or so I thought) free for Rifting. This morning I spent a lot more time simply questing, and a lot less time getting sidetracked searching for Artifacts and stuff. I got to the last part of Scarlet Gorge (somehow I always get turned around in that zone! I look at the map – yes, I have to go there! so I mark it with an “x”, turn myself around to face the “x”, and take off. Then the next time I look at the map, I’ve mysteriously been turned around and am charging off in the wrong direction! And! It only happens in Scarlet Gorge! Why?!) and finished the zone off when someone who was doing the same quest teamed up with me to kill off a rather nasty Boss and his minions, and close down his Rift (alas, not for good – it’ll be there again for everyone else who comes along to do this quest – but such is the nature of games! 😉 ) I’m now in Scarwood Reach – probably one of my favourite zones in Telara – and Satai is now level 36. Only four more levels to level 40! 🙂 I’m not quite sure who I’ll take up to level 40 next – I’d like it to be one of the two male characters I’ve got, but they’re both Defiant, and so is Satai, and I really like to alternate between Guardian and Defiant when I’m leveling in “batches” like this. When I went out, just before one o’clock, for my pre-lunch Stair Walk, I looked out the window and was quite shocked to see how cold, wet, and miserable it was! It’s reasonably warm here in the Den – the computers and screens stop the temperature from dropping too low, and I hadn’t noticed the creeping cold. The lounge room was quite cold, and poor old Flipper was all huddled up in her “Winter Chalet” (one of the two triangular cat caves we got for her) and which she loves so much that it seems like she never leaves them, except to eat, drink, use her litter box, or to squish in next to Julian for “Daddy Pats”, when he’s sitting in the lounge room with his feet up! I turned the heater on for her, and vowed to grab a scarf for myself when I got back from my Stair Walk. My favourite eldest daughter decided to come over today, after all, so instead of taking her home after her excursion, himself brought her over here instead, and any hopes of a day’s Rifting melted, “like tears in rain“. We spent the afternoon watching episodes of “The 100” because somehow or other, the season 4 episodes of “Person of Interest” were sort of muddled up with the same episode number as those of season 3 (season 4, episode 14, turned out to be season 3, episode 14, and so on). We’re not quite sure how that happened, but we’re not going to be able to watch any more of “Person of Interest” until we get it sorted out *cry* which is a rotten shame because it’s a really good show…. and I wanna know what happens next!

I’m not sure what we’re doing tomorrow – what I do know is that if the weather’s anything like it is today, I won’t be going any further than the fire escape stairs! Hopefully I’ll be able to get Satai up to level 40, and be able to start on the next one… actually, I’ve been thinking… I’m amassing all these boxes full of Dimension goodies, the boxes all being of different sizes and value, courtesy of my Minions. I have no idea what’s in the boxes, and no two boxes will contain the same items – but each box can contain anywhere between six and seventeen Dimension items… (it reminds me of the old Nursery Rhyme: “As I was going to St. Ives”*) I really, really need to unpack those boxes, sort out the unpacked Dimension items, and put them all… I dunno!… somewhere! Now that I’ve reached a particular Loyalty Level, all of my characters received (amongst other goodies) a 36 slot bag.  What I’m thinking I’m going to have to do is empty out someone’s bank as well as their bags – either selling everything, and/or passing whatever I can to other characters to “mind for me”, via the in-game mailbox. Items can sit in your inbound mail for up to 29 days before the game will delete it, opened or unopened. And if you don’t open it, when you’re ready, you can “return to sender”, free of charge! I’m not sure what the maximum number of items a mail box can hold is, but I think it’s quite a lot – and I have twelve characters… (plus Julian’s – though if they’re “bound to account” items they  can only be sent to someone on my game account) Anyway, it’s going to be a truly mammoth task – which is why I just keep putting it off, and putting it off… and, of course, the more I keep putting it off, the bigger and more massive the job becomes… Perhaps I’ll think about getting onto it next week! (read: “next year“!)

Weigh-in this morning… was… horrible! Terrible! It was worse than “horrible”, or “terrible”! 😦 Well, I was expecting to bounce back up, after such a massive loss (seven points!) – I figured… 95.8kg?… 95.9kg?… I’d thought that at 95.5kg I’d be far enough down into the 95kg zone to not bounce back up into the 96kg zone again. Boy! Was I wrong! I went back to where I was the day before yesterday. The weight I’d sat on for two whole days! (Saturday and Sunday) Yes, that’s right! I went back up to 96.2kg!  [please insert a very long string of extremely rude words here!] I was not pleased… I will be even less pleased if I’m still sitting on the same weight again tomorrow! I’ll keep you posted…

Anyway, that’s about it from me for today – call back again tomorrow night – see what I’ve decided to do about the Dimension boxes 😉 and what my weight has decided to do to me! (hopefully nothing too nasty!) I’m wondering if I should add on another, fourth, Stair Walk, around 9.30pm, on my way back down to the Den. After that not terribly pleasant surprise this morning, it looks like I’m going to have to do something to start things moving again. Oh well, at least I’m only on those wretched pills for another three days – and then it’ll take me about another three days for my body to come out of its “fluid retaining state” Actually, what I think I really need is another long and invigorating shopping trip – maybe look for a rug for the lounge room floor, or a coffee table… or both – only not if the weather’s going to be as wet as it was today! So it looks like I’ll have a lot to tell you all about tomorrow night, but until then, please bee good, drive extra carefully in this wet weather, remember to change into something warm and dry if you’ve been out in the rain – and above all, stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

*The Old Nursery Rhyme (or Riddle) goes like this: “As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives. Every wife had seven sacks, every sack held seven cats. Every cat had seven kits! Kits, cats, sacks and wives, how many were there going to St. Ives?”
The answer to the riddle: Only one person was going to St. Ives! The narrator. The text says “As I was going to St. Ives” – but it’s not revealed where the multi-wived man was going with all those sacks of cats and kits! 😉

Well, here it is, another Monday. Doesn’t matter that it’s a Public Holiday, it’s still a Monday, and therefore to be hated and despised (that’s the Garfield in me talking – take no notice! 😉 ) In actual fact, I like Mondays (I get my hair done on Mondays! It makes me feel good, and I start to look semi-human again! 🙂 ) The beginning of a new week – who knows what might happen? Who knows where you might go, or who you might meet. Of course, it could all be horrible – you could fall down the stairs and break both arms and both legs at the same time, or meet up with your worst enemy at a function where you’d be forced (obviously against your will!) to be pleasant, if not nice, to them (Oh, the shame of it all!) But on the other hand, you might win the lottery! (please Mrs. Goldstein! Will you come half way to meet me, and buy a ticket?! *) or you might find the most perfect pair of shoes you ever set eyes on (or foot into) at a 75% off Sale. Beginnings are exciting – endings? I don’t like endings… depending on exactly what is ending, that is. Anyway, it’s the beginning of the week, I had my hair done, and I’ve thought of a new way to incorporate my season icon(s) into the blog header, now that I’ve started using the frames around the text. I don’t have time to start work on them tonight, but I can hardly wait to try it out tomorrow morning. It’s a shame I didn’t think of it until just before my evening Stair Walk (wot I’ve just come back from) because I wouldn’t have spent so much time Rifting today, I would have been… “designing“! 🙂 On the down side of today (why does there always be a down side to most things? It’s not fair!) I found that due to various extraneous circumstances, I wouldn’t be able to spend as much time with a friend as I had done in the past. We’ll still be able to correspond, but not for as long, or as often as I’d like. I shall miss them a lot… 😦

After lunch, himself and I had a couple of hours Rifting together. We’ve both reached level 48, and have finally been able to get to Ember Isle! How long we’ll stay there I have no idea, because we’ve already been given our “breadcrumb” quest to Dusken and Brevane… How to explain it… ummm… OK. A long time ago, in a mythical land called Telara, you could really only live and quest until you were about (level) 50. Then you were expected to either go fossicking in deep, dank, dungeons, or go Raiding, or, to live on through your successors… But the Programming and Game Writing ghods of Telara took pity on the people living there, and created for them a sort of Island Paradise, called Ember Isle. It was a beautiful island, full of majestic trees, scenic mountains, gushing waterfalls – a true paradise – except for the fact that it was populated by a lot of nasty mobs who just wanted to spoil things for everyone who went there. So the Programming and Game Writing ghods decreed that any adventurers willing to go there and slay these nasty, blood thirsty mobs, would be given the chance to reach the ripe old age (level) of 52! Time passed, and the adventurers who went to Ember Isle found that they very quickly tired of their new “paradise”. Well, it was only a very small island, and once you’d been around it three or four times, it all started to get a bit boring. Well, the Programming and Game Writing ghods had anticipated this, of course, and had been secretly working on… not one… not two… but three new islands for these adventurers to go to! Two larger islands, one called Dusken, and the other Brevane. There was a third, smaller island, called Tempest Bay, to act as a Capital City (incorporating an extremely busy Banking and Auctioning centre, and Skill training in all areas, from Fishing and Survival, to Runecrafting, and more!) for all the adventurers heading off to Dusken or Brevane. In these brand new areas, adventurers could reach the truly giddy heights of (level) 60! Later, these same Programming and Game Writing ghods created yet another new area, where you could reach the pinnacle of success, at (level) 65 – but that’s a story for another night! 😉 So there you are. People became too bored with tiny Ember Isle, and it’s largely a forgotten zone now – most people skip it altogether and go straight on to Dusken or Brevane once they reach level 50 – and as yet, I’m not sure what we’ll do…

Weigh-in this morning was a real eye-opener! I weighed myself three times, just to be sure the two of us, Julian and I, really were seeing what we thought we were seeing – but the scales didn’t even waver once – they just went straight to…. (drum roll, please!) 95.5kg! I tell you, the scales were quite insistent! That’s a drop of over half a kilo! Seven (7) points, to be precise! This has put me in a state of great agitation! – from a drop that big, I know I’m going to have to suffer a bounce back… this is expected, and assumed to be “normal”. However, at 95.5kg, is the bounce back going to be big enough to bounce me back into the 96kg zone, or, at 95.5kg, am I already far enough into the 95kg zone to remain in it?! I sure hope so! I still can’t quite believe I lost so much – overnight! Perhaps I should eat a very small Hot Cross Bun, with just a smidgen of butter, more often! (only kidding! I had a normal breakfast this morning…) I think I’ll almost be too scared to get on the scales tomorrow morning – because I’ll find that today’s weigh-in was, after all, just a dream, and instead of being 95.5kg, I’ll really be back at something like 96.8kg, or something 😦

And that was my start of the week! 🙂 How was yours? 🙂 Tomorrow can’t come fast enough! As I said earlier, I’m absolutely itching to try out my idea for a framed header, which will incorporate my season icons (and where applicable, appropriate zodiac signs for those having a birthday that month!) So there’s really not much more to tell you, except to remind you to drop by again tomorrow night, and find out how I went with my framed header and season signs idea – in fact, if it works out, you might even see the blog wearing one of them – so take a good look at what’s there now – because you might not see it again! 😉 You’ll also find out what happened at my morning weigh-in – did I bounce back up? By how much? Or did I stay the same (boring!) or… did a major miracle occur, and did I go down again? Whatever – I’m sure there’ll be lots of other news and tidbits  with which to regale you all 🙂 So until tomorrow night, please try to bee good, don’t throw balls in the house (you might break a window!), and above all… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

* Very old Jewish joke… If you want me to tell it to you, just ask… (it’s a little long to print here… 😉 )

Happy Easter, everyone! 🙂 Hop-fully, the Easter Bunny brought you all lots of yummy eggs, and just as hopefully, everyone remembered the real reason behind Easter. And it’s also Pesach (Passover) – so because all of the three Spring-time celebrations coincide this year, there’s something for everyone to to enjoy and think about – Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns, the crucifixion and the resurrection, and “the passing over” (hence Passover) of the Hebrew homes by the Angel of Death, when all the first-born in Egypt were killed. I hope you all had a happy and relaxing day with friends and relatives! 🙂

Well, the place wasn’t totally devoid of chocolate this year – my favourite youngest daughter, Kate, somehow managed to miss out on the “No Chocolate Gifts Allowed” directive, and brought Easter Eggs for Lisa, Neale, and Julian – but because of my diet, she brought a lovely “Candle in a Cup” from Dusk, for me! 🙂 It smells beautiful, and is called “Silk”. Lisa and Neale gave us a small, fluffy white rabbit (which is unusual for them – they usually go for plushie toys!) and they gave Kate and Terry the same rabbit, only brown, and “shiny” (apparently it looks shiny when held under certain lights) We gave the kids their usual gift ($$), and a small memento to put on their already overcrowded shelves. The roast lamb was – according to a unanimous vote – “delicious” (it didn’t smell too awful, either! 😉 ) and although he cooked quite a large roast (“because cold roast lamb goes so well in sandwiches!” quipped Julian) there was virtually not enough left to make even half a sandwich! Of course the roast was accompanied by roast potatoes, roast pumpkin, and green beans, with mint sauce, and a home made salad, to refresh the palate. No gravy – no-one wanted any. I had an extremely nice Optifast Berry Crunch bar, and quite a lot of mineral water (it should have been a Cappuccino bar today, because I’d had a Berry Crunch one for lunch yesterday, but I didn’t say anything because the Berry Crunch ones are my favourite, and what the hey! It’s Easter! 😉 ) Dessert, for everyone but myself, was a white chocolate cheese cake. It was in a box, and it was quite comical when Julian opened the box to take it out, but just stood there, looking into the box, saying plaintively “But I ordered the small one!” They’d either given him the wrong box (in which case I’m sure some other poor family was looking into their box and saying, equally as plaintively, “But I ordered the large one!”) or the shop people were feeling extra generous because it’s Easter (or maybe because they’d just run out of small ones?) Who knows! Anyway, everyone gobbled their pieces of cake most enthusiastically – however, I think it was probably terribly rich. because neither Lisa not Terry could finish theirs (Neale gallantly consumed the rest of Lisa’s for her!) Kate and Terry took some roast lamb and some cake home with them, Lisa and Neale didn’t, and I fear that the rest of the cake will be consigned to the rubbish bin. Shame – it looked nice, and although I’m not a big fan of white chocolate (it just doesn’t taste chocolatey to me!) I’d have liked to try it, if I could have… Which I couldn’t… Can’t… But just wait until next year! Chocolate eggs will be consumed! Cake will be eaten! Roast lamb, roast potato, roast pumpkin, and green beans will all be munched with gusto! (actually, I’m not too fond of mint sauce – I would have preferred the gravy!) All in moderation, of course! I do not want to have to start this weight-loss business all over again! Once is quite enough, thank you, and I have no intention of going back to the way I was. Ever.

This morning, after my morning Stair Walk, and breakfast, of a very small Hot Cross Bun, with just a hint of butter on it, I actually had time to check my Auctions, and manage my Minions, as well as create, finish, and put up, not one, but two new blog headers! I changed the headers over again just after the kids had left (it’s the one you’re seeing now – I had to move the framed part about half an inch to the right, because it wasn’t sitting in the centre of the blog text) And now that all of that is done, I’m sitting here writing this – I’m finding that writing in the evenings takes far too long – by the time I look things up, research something I’ve said (or am about to say! I don’t just write off the top of my head, you know!) look up spellings, preview, edit, proofread, and save the draft, I seldom finish before eleven thirty, whether I spend time in Rift or on Facebook before I start writing or not. In Rift, our daily Patron’s “gift” doesn’t become available until just after eleven o’clock, and more often than not, I have to leave it until the morning to collect it – and Minions – some of their “adventures” take eight hours, others ten hours – and you really should sort through all of their findings and re-set them, so that you’ll have another lot to process in another eight to ten hours. It usually works out well – re-set around eleven at night, and they’re ready for collection and re-setting again in the morning… But if I don’t have time, or forget, it all gets out of sync and I get annoyed, out of sorts, and grumpy. Anyway, from now on, I’m going to be writing in the afternoons – before my evening Stair Walk. Which I really should be getting ready to go on, now! (*guilty look*) Oh well, we’re all about an hour out today because Daylight Saving ended this morning at 3.00am (I hope you all remembered to set your clocks and watches back an hour?! 🙂 )

Weigh-in this morning. Well, it was probably better than I deserve, considering the very small Hot Cross Bun, with just a hint of butter on it, that I had for breakfast on Good Friday, and the fact that I’m on those fluid retaining pills… I stayed the same, at 96.2kg. Let’s see what happens tomorrow – I have drunk a lot of mineral water today, and those [censored!] pills are probably going to grab hold of all that mineral water, and soak it all up into my tissues, so I might just erupt over the 96kg line, and back into the 97kg zone 😦 I don’t think I’m looking forward to getting on those scales tomorrow…

So anyway, drop in again tomorrow night – see what news and hot goss will be to hand! 🙂 And no, I didn’t lick the knife that cut the white chocolate cheesecake into slices today, not even very carefully! However, who knows what the morrow may bring! There’s sure to be something here for everyone to find of interest or amusement! And hopefully, it’ll all be good! 🙂 So until tomorrow night, bee good, please help yourself to a slice of that white chocolate cheese cake before it gets permanently disposed of, and above all… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂