Would you believe that all I did with Rift today was check my Auctions and organise my Minions this morning (at least I think I did! Everything was so rushed this morning that I can’t really remember – oh well, I’ll find out as soon as I’ve finished writing this I suppose…) I was having my hair done today, so it was like scramble out of bed, get weighed, sprint for the fire escape stairs to do my morning Stair Walk, race back, shower, dress, and gulp down a hasty breakfast, before himself went off to pick up my favourite eldest daughter who was coming over for the day. I had my hair done, and as usual, it looks very nice – if a little faded. Hopefully I’ll be getting the colour re-done next week. Lee weighed herself here yesterday, and while I won’t tell you what she did weigh, suffice to say that it really alarmed all of us, including her! She’s a lot heavier than I was before I started this diet, a lot! She must lose weight, and I think she now realises this herself. What I mean is, she knew that she needed to lose weight, but I think – hope! that she now realises how imperative this has become. Unfortunately she can be rather negative at times, and in the past it’s been a long face, and the unwillingness to going without favourite foods – plus the fact that without “live-in” support and encouragement it’s terribly hard to persevere. Julian has been a major factor in my weight loss – he does all the cooking (and other housework) because I can’t stand up straight enough or for long enough to get my own meals. He still has his normal meals, which he cooks (I taught him to cook years ago!) and he makes my evening meal (Optifast soup –  eitherTomato, Vegetable, or Chicken) at the same time. He also makes my diet jellies. For breakfast we have pretty much the same, and my lunch is an Optifast Bar (which Lee has never wanted to even try, claiming that a little bar like that wouldn’t be enough for her) He supports, cajoles, and encourages me all the way to the scales, and I doubt that I could have come this far, and this fast, without him. Unfortunately, her husband is… shall we say… not quite as encouraging and supportive as mine. He was diagnosed the year before last as having Type 2 Diabetes (acquired insulin intolerance) and was forced to go on a diet. He lost just enough weight to keep his blood sugar levels in check, and that’s as far as it went. I’m afraid that Lee is going to have to pretty much go it alone to lose weight. We, of course, will do everything we can to support, help, and encourage her, but she’s in Glen Waverley and we’re in Doncaster… but we’ll do the best we can…

After lunch I suddenly realised that I hadn’t done my midday Stair Walk, so once again I raced off (after lunch, but before coffee) and trundled up and down the two flights of stairs. When I got back, we started watching “Person of Interest”, and it’s really getting to the scary parts! Samaritan, the “bad” machine, is manipulating the Stock Market, which could cause a global economic collapse – our heroes have to stop it; Control, who oversees the handling of relevant numbers for the government, begins to question the methods and intentions of the Samaritan program, with somewhat disastrous results – and then there are the little sub-plots, like the crime boss who wants to assassinate the head of a rival group, Elias, who is well-known to, and an occasional ally of Reese and Finch… so many plots are thickening, all at the same time! I can’t wait for next week to find out what happens next!

After my favourite eldest daughter left, I toyed with starting to write this early, but decided instead to go and work on my new desktop wallpaper thingy – or what will become my new desktop wallpaper thingy. I was using a Chrome theme that was green and cream, with little pinkish flowers, but it really wasn’t “me”, so I did the second easiest thing and went looking for something else. (what’s the easiest thing to do? I hear you ask – why, just to leave things as they are, with the current (old, gray) desktop wallpaper thingy! That’s the easiest! 🙂 ) The one I’m working on at the moment also happens to be green and cream – only without the flowers, but I’m not really thrilled with it. I’m doing my damnedest to steer clear of grays, blues, and mauves, for a change – because that’s usually what I end up with, and for once, I want something different! I think I’ll keep looking… *sigh*

Weigh-in this morning – was highly gratifying! I even had to start a new graph page – I ran out of weight before I ran out of days (the weight is listed down the left hand side of the graph paper, the days are numbered along the bottom) I started the new page on… 99.4kg, down another three points! 🙂 Now, I might see-saw up and down a bit from 99.4kg, but if I doubt that I’ll drift back over the 100kg mark, if I  do, I think there’ll be something seriously amiss! I really hope I go down again tomorrow, I’d hate to have to go back to the previous graph page again – and having said that, I probably will go up, or stay the same – but please, dear, kind, Great Galactic Kitten, please let me stay in my newly acquired double figures!

So tune in again tomorrow night – find out if I couldn’t wait until next week to find out what happens in “Person of Interest”, and had a quick peek at the next episode… The pair of slacks (with pockets) that I got from Autograph, and which are too big, are getting swapped over tomorrow, and I wanted to get another of the jumpers with the long sleeves that I got last week, only in a size 18, because the one I got – last week – is a size 20, and it’s already too big for me. S’funny though, I’m wearing one of their T-shirts in a size 20, and it fits fairly snugly… different fabrics, I suppose – the jumper is a sort of a loose knit. Oh well, that’s about all that happened today, but I’m sure there’ll be heaps of news that you won’t want to miss out on tomorrow night, especially about my weight! For now though, I’m off to check Auctions and Minions, then continue my search for “the perfect Chrome theme”! So until tomorrow night, bee good, don’t get caught 😉 , and… stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

The ides of March… Julius Caesar was warned about the date, and it’s funny that I should remember now, today, that it was in late February 2006 that my mother went to have some chest x-rays taken because although she didn’t have a cold, or any sort of infection, she couldn’t seem to stop coughing. She had an appointment to see the specialist on March 15th – she told me this on the phone, and with an uneasy feeling, I told her jokingly, “Oh dear! The ides of March! That doesn’t bode well!”, and we both laughed. She found out, on the ides of March, that she had inoperable lung cancer. She passed away at 4.00am on January 1st, 2007. So, the ides of March wasn’t kind to Julius Caesar, and it wasn’t kind to my mother… but it was a lot nicer to himself and me, today, as we shared a (somewhat belated for himself) Big Birthday Bash… and although I might not have reached “double figures” (weight-wise) for my actual Birthday last Monday, I did achieve them within my Birthday week! And so, my Birthday week ending at midnight tonight, my Pisces icon has been replaced with the Autumn icon, until the next Birthday, Terry’s – my favourite youngest daughter’s husband – in early May. Lisa and Neale gave himself the full 8 Series of “Foyle’s War” – a really excellent British detective drama television series set during and shortly after the Second World War. Highly recommended! 🙂 They gave me an indoor (table or desktop-type) fountain – my old one, which I’d had for a decade or more, had finally turned up its toes and died, and I missed the gentle sound of water splashing. Kate and Terry gave both of us Amazon gift vouchers – one of our most favourite presents to get, because we’re always buying books, ebooks, and music, through Amazon… A good day was had by all – lots of happy chatter, good food, good champagne (and good mineral water for me!) The Nandos chicken tenders looked yummy, as did the chips… even the salad looked good (I’m not really terribly big on salads) – and the Birthday cake! It looked absolutely deliciously divine! It appeared to be (*sob* unfortunately I couldn’t have any this year 😦 ) a sort of hazelnut and chocolate torte with whipped cream and toasted almond slivers coating the sides. My flavourite! Oh well, this time next year will come, and I’ll be able to have my cake, and eat it, too! 🙂 I shamefully neglected my guests and I did do my before luncheon Stair Walk – with pockets in my slacks it’s a lot easier to carry the keys with which to let myself back into the apartment – and I went on my own because himself was busy dividing up the chicken and chips and making the salad. After lunch we repaired to the lounge room for coffee, and more chatter and gossip, and the kids finally left at about quarter to four.

I didn’t get much of a chance to do anything on Rift this morning – just my Auctions and my Minions – hopefully I’ll get a chance to catch up with things tomorrow. I did download some more flower brushes – I found a Chrome theme that I thought was quite nice, and it’s sort of green and cream with – er – pink flowers on it. No, I know that green and cream with pink flowers doesn’t sound much like me, but I thought it was worth giving it a go… I’m going to have to change my desktop wallpaper though – at the moment it’s in shades of gray with silver-blue snowflakes, which doesn’t really go with green, and cream, and little pink flowers… Kate said that maybe I could just change the background colour, and make the snowflakes pink (working in layers makes things soooo much easier! 😉 ) which is an idea, I suppose – I might try it (or I might just try looking for an easier to match Chrome theme! But that’s taking the easy way out, isn’t it! 😉 ) And anyway – the last lot of flower brushes I tried out this morning did look promising… sort of… (himself is setting up my new little fountain, even as I type! This one has a light in it, too! 🙂 )

Weigh-in this morning. Well, my Birthday week ended on a happy note, with me back into double figures! Back down to 99.7kg – a drop of three points. Hopefully I won’t bounce back into the 100kg zone again – with a lot of luck, and lots of crossed fingers, I might even go down another point or two, establishing me more firmly in the double figure zone. Perhaps the third Stair Walk per day is paying off at last! Hmm maybe I should try to fit in a fourth Stair Walk somewhere… but I only have three meals a day, so when else could I go? Morning tea time? Perhaps afternoon tea time… but I don’t have morning and afternoon tea any more – I haven’t for a long while, in my attempt to whittle down as much food intake as I possibly could, without dying of malnutrition in the process… So anyway, let’s see what tomorrow brings! (hopefully not another bounce back up – even staying the same would be preferable! (the novelty of being in double figures hasn’t worn off yet!))

So drop in again tomorrow night! I’m sure you’ll want to know how my new little fountain worked, and whether or not it leaked water all over the dressing table! 😉 My single coat of lusciously ripe red raspberry nail polish is holding up quite well – it’s just a teeny titch worn on the very tippy-tip-tips of the nails of my right hand (but not the left! weird!) I’m wondering if I should add a second coat tomorrow, or just re-do them altogether in a day or two… more decisions! I hate having to make decisions sometimes… I’ll have to remind himself that we only have until the 18th of March to book for the photography “gift voucher” wot we got from the Vet – I’m still in two minds about it – I hate being photographed, and I do not photograph well (in fact I won’t allow anyone to take a photo of me, full stop!) but it’s like promises made by makeup companies about their face creams – you know damn well that the product isn’t going to make you look younger, or more radiant, or less wrinkled, even if you use them religiously for the next ten years – but a secret little part of you hopes that this time it’ll be different, that this time, it will make you look younger, more radiant, and less wrinkled – and that’s why we women keep buying these wretched (and very expensive) products, while the manufacturers laugh all the way to the bank. We know they won’t, but we hope they will. And so it is with this photography gift voucher. I know I won’t look any better this time around than I did the last time I had a “professional” photo done (I looked ghastly! Mum loved it, but I thought I looked awful!) but part of me keeps hoping that this time they’ll be able to make me look… human? So I dunno, but we’ve only got a few more days to make up our minds… I’ll be able to tell you tomorrow if, like Cinderella at midnight, my double figure weight will turn back into an ugly, fat, 100kg pumpkin! So until tomorrow night, please try to contain your impatience, and bee good, don’t eat anymore Birthday cake, no matter how chocolaty it is, and… above all… stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

“Beware the ides of March” – that’s tomorrow… it’s the day of our Big Double Birthday Bash – should I be wary of girls (not Greeks) bearing gifts? 🙂 I hope not… Himself has decided not to BBQ tomorrow, we’ll do the usual Nandos chicken tenders, chips, and a nice home-made semi-Greek salad, with some sort of fancy cake standing in for a Birthday Cake… (?? what? Oh! No, I meant that he’s not going to have a BBQ tomorrow, not that he was going to BBQ the day! (honestly, some people! ruddy pedants!)) Everyone’s going to have to excuse me around 1.30pm while I go for my midday Stair Walk, but I’m sure they’ll be able to get along without me for about eight to nine minutes… As usual, I’ll have mineral water, while they have champagne, and I’ll have my usual Optifast bar (Berry Crunch tomorrow! 🙂 ) for lunch and dessert combined. This time next year, however, I expect to be hoeing in with the rest of them! It sort of brings a new facet to the nostalgic Jewish saying “Next year, in Jerusalem!”, doesn’t it! 🙂 “Next year, when I’ve finished my diet!” hmmm… Actually, I expect to finish my diet this year – maybe around August? September? Whenever I hit 75kg, and stabilize myself on that, anyway. Dr. Y. wants 75kg, so he’s going to get 75kg! 🙂 (ain’t I a good little patient! 😉 ) So because we’re not going to be able to have our usual Telara Bounty Hunting Day tomorrow, we had a bit of a play there today instead. Before we started though, I noticed that my favourite eldest daughter had linked to an article on Fiona Patten and The Sex Party on my Facebook Timeline. It seems that Ms. Patten has decided that her party has come of age, and should maybe discard the “Look At Me!” name, and opt for something a little more… credible? Or maybe a little less “smutty joke sniggerable”? (what’s wrong with “sniggerable”?! If the word doesn’t exist, it should, it says what it means – and besides, it does exist now, I just made it up and added it to the dictionary! *blows raspberry at screen*) I think a lot of people have been telling Ms. Patten the same thing – “Change the name of your Party to something a little less sniggerable, and more people will vote for you!” Have any of you readers ever visited The Sex Party site, and had a look at their policies? If you haven’t, you should. I don’t agree with everything they advocate, but for the most part they’re sensible, thoughtful, and what’s more, achievable! They’re for all sorts of things from gender equality to the right of the (genuinely) suffering, and who have no possibility of a cure, to Euthanasia. You wouldn’t allow your dog, or cat, or rabbit (or bird) to suffer needlessly, with no possible hope of recovery, would you! So why would you let your parent, or child, or relative? (but that’s another subject – please don’t get me started on it!) Ms. Patten says that she’s neither a Libertarian, nor a Civil Libertarian, but she’d like her Party to be the Liberals – the Actual Liberals – unfortunately, that name has already been taken – by the good ol’ Liberal Party – but I do have a suggestion for a name that might suit her Party… “The Progressive Liberal Party” – or, if they want to be a little more grandiose, “The Progressive Liberal Party of Australia”. I shall inform my favourite eldest daughter tomorrow of my Party name suggestion, and she can pass it on to Ms. Patten at their next Party meeting… (Please Note: This was not my official March Rant – in fact, it wasn’t even a rant – I just wanted you all to bear that in mind for when something arouses my ire enough for me to  publicly Rant about it, O.K? Thanks… 🙂 )

Back to Rifting. Well, we are still mowing the mobs down like grass before the scythe – knocking down mobs four levels (and often higher!) above our puny level 43 – it just takes a little longer, that’s all. Himself died once – I didn’t – and we did face some pretty hairy moments, especially around the base of the Flatyard where it was pretty much “stacks on the mill” when we ran into concealed, or “stealthed” fighters – once they jumped out at us, all their friends and relations seemed to come pouring out of the woodwork at us! That was pretty tough going, some of the time – but we survived 🙂 We even went up a level, and had we been playing the full day, we probably would have gone up a second level as well. Oh well, there’s always next week… After we finished off for the day – I had to do my nails, remember? – I did just that… I did use the new Willow deep, luscious, ripe, raspberry red nail polish, and I must say that it does look pretty! It’s a gorgeous red, and I didn’t even have to put on a second coat! (though I may have to after I finish typing this – typing is sheer murder on nail polish! I do hope it lasts! Maybe I should have used a second coat (worry,worry,worry)) I’ll see how it looks tomorrow morning…

Weigh-in this morning. Well, it was a big drop, and I was expecting it… I went back up to 100.0kg, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been (that’ll be tomorrow, I suppose… back to 100.5kg or something 😦 ) Still, I did make it down to 99,9kg, so it is possible… I shall try terribly hard to be brave, and not worry about it too much… (worry,worry,worry)

So, call in again tomorrow night – find out how the BDBB went, and did my nail polish last the night? What sort of Birthday Cake did we have, and what did we get for Birthday presents from the kids? I expect to get back to Embercat tomorrow, if only briefly, so hopefully I can take her run to level 20 a little further. And, of course, I’ll let you know what happens with my weight – I was terribly tempted last night  to not tell you that I’d gone down to 99.9kg – I felt it was almost like tempting fate, and, well, apparently it was… but four points is a lot to drop in one foul swoop, so I just have to grin and bear it (why do I have to grin?! I don’t feel like grinning, I don’t even feel like smiling! What I feel like doing is flinging myself down and screaming “It isn’t fair!”, and banging my fists and heels on the floor! That’s what I feel like doing. All this “grinning” and “bearing” things has got whiskers on it!) But you’ll find out all about it tomorrow night 🙂 So, until this time tomorrow, bee good, have some Birthday Cake, and… stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

Yet another Rifting day 🙂 As I said I would, I got Zorcha up to level 20, tidied her all up, posted off the waterbreathing necklace to Embercat, and off we took. Oh, and I think I might have said several posts ago that it was Carnival time in Telara? Well, during Carnival time, they have all sorts of rides and competitions – you can race toy horses on a miniature track, bounce on balls, have your fortune told – all the fun of the fair! Prizes consist mainly of gold tokens, which you can save up, year after year, until you get enough to claim a reasonably good prize. But apart from that, when you’re out doing your normal gathering things – Foraging, Mining and Butchering, you not only get the normal gains from all your hard work, but you also get extra stuff – Pumice, with your ore, Helium Blossoms with your herbage, Ultra Thin Hide with your… well, ordinary hides – and, if you follow the Parades around, whenever they pass crowds of cheering people, crystals are dropped which you can pick up. The Defiant’s are red, and are called “Resolve Cores”, the Guardian’s are blue, and are called “Might Cores”. Defiants can’t pick up Guardian’s crystals, and vice versa (so it’s no good going behind enemy lines to try to get some – you’ll get yourself killed by the Parade Guards!) However, they can be passed on to your other characters, whether they belong to the same faction or not – I just made the mistake of sending all of Zorcha’s “Resolve Cores” on to Embercat, who’s a Guardian. Never mind, I’ll just send them back – I did it more as an experiment to see if I could send the Pumice, Blossoms, and Ultra Thin Hides across – which works just fine.  You can take these items to a caravan just outside the capital cities and exchange 40 of any of them for glass beads, which in turn you can exchange for things like costumes, mounts, Dimension items, etc. from the World Event Shop (it’s not really as complicated as it sounds!) So I spend most of the day doing that, and, would you believe it? Embercat’s quest log was in almost the same sort of bad shape as Zorcha’s was!  Green “baby” quests mixed up with higher level Yellow quests – so I’m busy untangling that, at the moment, too! I only have another two girls to level up to level 20 after I finish with Embercat – Ondine, a level 8 Defiant, and Hialeah, a level 15 Guardian, who’s currently Auctionator, and Mistress of the Guild Bank Overflow. I’m not sure whether to level Hialeah up or not though – all her bag space is rapidly being eaten up with the GB overflow stuff… I suppose I could palm it off to someone else to “mind” for her while she levels up (it’d only take me a day from level 15) Yeah, I might do that, after I finish with Ondine. Then I have to take them all up to level 30 🙂 Himself and I have decided that because we won’t be able to have our usual Sunday fling in Telara because of the BDBB (Big Double Birthday Bash), we’ll try to get some gaming in tomorrow, instead. We won’t be able to play all day, but we should get a bit done 🙂 (and I have to do my nails tomorrow, too! I’ve decided that I will try out the luscious, ripe, red, raspberry Willow nail polish)

Aside from all of the above, it’s been a pretty quiet, boring day – my slacks have come home, an inch and a half shorter (I hope I guessed the amount to be shortened right!) but I’ll save them up for Sunday – and maybe Monday – but I think they’re “dry-cleanables” only (that is, I wouldn’t dare wash them at home, in case they shrank!) and I wouldn’t want to spill tea on them or anything! 😉 so tonight’s blog is going to be kind of short… (Oh, stop cheering! *annoyed look*)

Weigh-in this morning. Drum roll, please! I weighed in at…. 99.9kg! Double figures! It is possible, after all! Miracles do still happen! Mind you, it was a drop of four points, which is a lot, so I do expect it to be back up again tomorrow (says she, secretly hoping that it’ll go down a bit more… 🙂 ) So… there really is light at the end of the tunnel – and just maybe it’s not an oncoming train… So as I said, I expect to be up in the 100kg zone again tomorrow, but it’s only a matter of time until I’m firmly entrenched in the 90kgs (or 99kgs, anyway)

So tune in again tomorrow night – see if we Rifted, and if we were silly enough to try another Nightmare Rift, or if we continued to mow ’em down like dry grass before a scythe in beautiful Downtown Fortune’s Shore (Shimmersand)  – and I’ll also let you know what the L.R.R.R Willow looks like on, as opposed to in the bottle. I suppose you’ll probably want me to tell you how my weight went, too – and how much I went back up into the 100kg zone (at 99.9kg it really can’t go up without going back into the 100kg zone, can it?! Hmmm Unfortunately, I don’t think my scales can measure weight to two decimal points… Shame….) Well, there it is – or rather, there it was – My Exciting Day in a nutshell!  by Winter Thyme 🙂 (sounds like a good title for a book, or a movie, or maybe a play… poetry, anyone?) So until this time tomorrow night, bee good, take care, and… always stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

A true Rift day today – for once! 🙂 Zorcha is now level 18 – I could have got her to level 20, but by then my eyes were starting to cross, so I gave it a rest for a while. This morning, before my Stair Walk, I tried on my two new pairs of slacks – the one I got from Autograph was too big. The material they’re made from wasn’t at all “stretchy”, so I decided to get the next size up – just in case I needed the “stretch” that wasn’t there – and I got them in size 22. Big mistake! They’re going to have to go back and get exchanged for size 20, after all. The other ones, from My Size, in deep bottle green with a black swirly design, fit fine… except that they were too long. They went off today to be shortened, and should be ready tomorrow. Good! And both pairs have pockets, for once! Yay!! So I went off for my Stair Walk in my other slacks… After breakfast, I Rifted, and himself started “tidying out” some of the drawers and cupboards in the hall and dining room. Some of the things my mother had secreted in boxes and baskets inside the drawers and cupboards, pre 2006, elicited exclamations of “Good grief! Is that were those got to!”, as well as a lot of “What the hell is that!”, and “Why on earth did she keep those?!” A lot of things were thrown out, and a lot of things were saved for posterity (that is, let the kids throw them out when it’s their turn to go through all this stuff!) And guess what! All of a sudden we have a couple of empty drawers, just waiting and begging to be filled with more junk…er stuff! Oh, and we found out what happened to the Plan A present! Although addressed to our address here in Doncaster, Australia, it was shipped off to…. get this… Toronto, Canada, where it was (thankfully) “returned to sender” Honestly, how can you mistake “Doncaster, Australia” for “Toronto, Canada”? The two places don’t even start with the same ruddy  letter! Personally, I think the shipping company should send it on to us at the correct address, Express Post, and Free! Still, at least we know what happened to it, so I suppose that’s something… At the moment I’m trying to find a nice coffee table that will match our new entertainment unit and side tables. There was a matching one available, but (a) we didn’t like it all that much, (b) it was a bit too long, and (c) it wasn’t wide enough. Why is it though, that when you specifically ask Google to look for “coffee tables”, they send you links to bookcases, dining room tables and chairs, entertainment units, and just about everything else you can think of that isn’t a coffee table?! It annoys me… I’m longing for the day when you can just say to Google (or whatever search engine they’re using in the year 2566) “show me coffee tables, in light Tasmanian Oak, available in Melbourne Australia, and preferably in Doncaster!”, and it’ll show you all the coffee tables made of light Tasmanian Oak, available in Doncaster, Melbourne (Australia) and nothing else! How can it be so hard? The search engine only has to look for four words: coffee, table – hmmm… I can see a snag right there! The word “table”, following the word coffee… I suppose you could fix that problem by running the two words together, making it “coffeetable” – yeah, O.K. it only has to look for three words: “coffeetable” (all one word, no confusion, right?), “Doncaster”, and “Melbourne”… hold on, another snag! There are places called “Melbourne” and “Doncaster” all over the world – it’d probably be more straightforward to simply put in a post code, and a mileage/kilometer limiter… That would make only two words the search engine had  to look for, and a mileage/kilometer limiter, making it “coffeetable”, “3108”, and “25km” Once it coughed up the information on all the coffee tables within a 25km radius of Doncaster, then you could do a text search for the words “Light Tasmanian Oak” – and viola, as the French say – you’d find the right coffee table for you -Light Tasmanian Oak, not too far away, etc., etc. – in no time at all – no hassles, no stress… just… lots of lovely coffee tables to choose from! 🙂 Roll on, 2566! 😉

Weigh-in this morning was… disappointing. I [insert very rude word here, please] stayed the same 😦 100.3kg Despite the third Stair Walk per day. Despite finishing off those ruddy pills. Despite all my best efforts. I stayed the same. *gloom* Well, I suppose, at a pinch, that I can use the excuse (or reason) that it takes a couple of days for the effect of the pills to wear off, or the fact that maybe doing this third Stair Walk per day is swapping “fat cells” for calf and thigh “muscle cells”… but while the former might have an element of truth in it, I don’t really believe the latter… because my legs don’t feel any stronger, and climbing those last eight steps on the way back up still hurts my left thigh muscle, a lot! I hope I go down a bit tomorrow – but I probably won’t… I’ll probably stay the same… or go up again… 😦

Anyway, stay tuned tomorrow night, when I’ll probably have got Zorcha to level 20, and stated on my next “willing volunteer”. I’m also trying to decide what to do about my nails for Sunday (the dual “Big Birthday Bash” for both me, and himself, who missed out on his last month, because the lift was out) By Sunday, they’re really going to need doing again, so I suppose I could do them on Saturday afternoon (or even tomorrow) but then I’ll get myself all out of sync… (but is that so terrible, anyway? Why not just start a new “sync” to attune myself to?) Ah! Decisions, decisions! Be sure to find out what I decide to do, in tomorrow night’s blog, because it’s too soon to make a decision in tonight’s! 😉 There’s also the problem of what colour to use… I could use this one again – it’s a very nice sort of sparkly rust – or I could use the new Willow luscious ripe raspberry red, which would also look good… Well, you’ll find that out tomorrow night, too, I guess. I’ll also be able to fill you in on what tortures my weight will have inflicted on me tomorrow morning – I’ll either be rejoicing, or sobbing uncontrollably… one or the other… So, once more until tomorrow night, gentle readers, bee good, don’t buy any one-owner bridges, and above all, stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

Today, at long last, I did manage to go shopping! 🙂 I just had time to see to my Auctions and sort out my Minions, and we were off to The Glen. Finally! With my Autograph and My Size Birthday vouchers neatly folded in my handbag, our first stop was the rug shop on the ground floor near the David Jones entrance. They had some interesting rugs, and there was a lovely “Florentine” style rug in gold tones that would have looked lovely, but I wanted something a bit more… contemporary. While Julian chatted up the rug merchant and told him what we were after, I started flipping through those tall rug display frames – the second one in caught my eye straight away for the lounge room… Definitely not a colour we’d normally choose, it was in tones of grays with what can only be described as “off-black” (sort of like an off-white, only black?) Alright, perhaps it was more of a charcoal colour, only maybe a bit darker, here and there. The design is divided into nonsymmetrical and spaced squares, with delicate, almost branch-like squiggles on one side of the square, and a netting or lace-like tracery in the other side, and each square is slightly different from all the other ones. Sounds a bit weird when you’re trying to describe it, but the overall effect is very pleasing. It’s subdued, but not depressive, and although it’s in tones of black (or charcoal) and grays, it comes across more as a true “neutral” colour. Considering the fact that I want the curtains, lounge suite, and wall hangings (once we create the wall upon which to hang them, that is!) to provide the colour in the room, the neutral grays in the rug are the perfect foil. We need the next size up from the one they had in the shop though, so unless they have one in stock elsewhere, we’ll have to wait about a week for it – but that took care of the lounge room rug! Next, still wanting something more colourful and contemporary, we looked for a rug (or rugs) for the hall and spare room.  There was a gorgeous rug, in reds, golds, and darkish, sage greens, in a semi-abstract, semi-patchwork design which I thought would not only look good in the hall, but also in the spare room. The hall is an awkward shape – it’s sort of “L” shaped – and narrower down one end than the other – it would need two rugs, one larger, one smaller. They had one of these red, gold, and darkish sage green rugs in each of the sizes we wanted, so we got those, and have ordered another of the smaller ones for the spare room; it should be here in about a week, too. Julian has already put the two rugs down in the hall, where they look extremely nice. It’s funny, you know – when I was at school, I wanted to go on to uni and study ancient history and do Archaeology. Dad wanted me to do Architecture, but I didn’t have the mathematical skills (I was always totally and utterly hopeless at Maths! The only thing I did well was, would you believe, long division. I thought long division was fun…) So, not being able to do Architecture, I was shunted off to R.M.I.T. to do Interior Design – once again, I didn’t have the Maths, but I would have done reasonably well if I hadn’t become ill, and had to spend the next three years in various hospitals. But I do have a good artistic eye, and a flare for colours, and as Julian describes himself as having “the colour and fashion sense of Stevie Wonder”, I became the family’s Interior Designer – and Dad got at least a part of what he wanted for me (whether or not I was interested in it!) So the rugs are now organised. Then we went on to Autograph and My Size, where I used my Birthday vouchers (and quite a bit of cash) and got a couple of pairs of slacks with pockets in them (honestly, where’s a girl supposed to keep a tissue these days? in her hair?!) a couple of T-shirts, and a long sleeved jumper. Now I have to start looking at coffee tables – we went to Laura Ashley to get their latest catalogue, but (a) they didn’t have any, and (b) they had one of the coffee tables I was interested in there. I liked it in the catalogue, but I didn’t like it “in the flesh” – besides, it was too small… Now the Great Coffee Table Hunt is afoot! We still need to get some scatter cushions for the spare room, too… But that was about the extent of our shopping trip today – quite successful, I thought! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. A little bit better again – down to 100.3kg and… and… we did get back from our shopping spree before 3 o’clock – we got home just before two o’clock, and  I was like into the apartment, shed my feet (shoes), and out of the apartment again at almost exactly five to two, and around to the fire escape stairs for my (admittedly late! Lunch is usually around 1-ish) pre-lunch Stair Walk. I was finally able to sit down and have my lunch and a cup of tea at about a quarter past two, so I did remember to do my SW today! 😛 I wonder if my weight will behave itself again tomorrow?

So not much got done on Rift today – I did get Zorcha up another two levels, to level 14, but call in again tomorrow evening and see what’s been happening with my newest trainee. There’s still no sign of the Plan A present – himself will have to start chasing that up or maybe it’ll turn up tomorrow! My favourite eldest daughter had her first class for the trimester today, something to do with Television Production, I believe, which she seemed very cheerful about – but she’s had to change her day for coming over to either Monday or Tuesday. At the moment we’ve made it Monday, but I’d really rather is was Tuesday… still, it’ll work itself out, I’m sure. I don’t think anything very much is happening tomorrow, but there’ll be news and gossip for you, even if I have to make it up as I go along! 😉 I’m also a little trepidated as to what my weight will do tomorrow – it’s been good for two days in a row – does this mean I’ll go up again tomorrow, or stay the same? I’ll tell you tomorrow night whether the third Stair Walk is having a positive effect or not! So until tomorrow night, bee good, don’t walk in the rain, and… stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

It was an interesting day today – after breakfast I started Rifting, and himself went off to perform Taxi Duties for my favourite eldest daughter. The water to the block of apartments also went off – we’d had notification that the water would be off today between 9.00am and about 1.00pm, so we had casks of drinking water, buckets of flushable water, and hospital strength hand sanitizer on hand, so that was no problem. I worked really hard with Crystalsong this morning, and by the time himself got back I had her up to level 19. Now, I really feel terribly guilty… and ashamed… I didn’t do my pre-luncheon Stair Walk today, as I had previously stated that I would. You see, my “Plan B” present arrived, just after lunch, and before we’d had our lunch time cup of tea (most important, that cup of tea – can’t possibly do a Stair Walk on a tea-less stomach, no-way, no-how, no sirree! That’s mah story, and I’m-a stickin’ to it! 😉 )  and in all the excitement I simply forgot about my cup of tea, and, unfortunately, my Stair Walk.  The mysterious package contained a cordless, Bluetooth, mechanical keyboard! I really like mechanical keyboards – I know it’s showing my age, but they “feel” real, if you know what I mean. They have a nice, solid feel to the keys, and ye olde fashioned “clunk-clack” sound when you type 🙂 So far there’s still no sign of the “Plan A” present, but this keyboard is really great – it feels almost as good to the touch as the Estée Lauder face creams feel on your face! (I used them again this morning, and this evening my face still feels lovely and soft!) 🙂 Julian says that the keyboard does “sleep itself off” after about half an hour of inactivity, so I thought that it might be something to watch out for when I’m Rifting. But after playing a while this afternoon it turns out not to be the case – I’m forever hitting the space bar to jump over things, or hitting the “Y” key to mount and dismount from my trusty surfboard steed, so the keyboard doesn’t go to sleep while I’m playing, after all! 🙂 If it does (sleep itself off) all I have to do it hit a key and wait about 5 seconds, and it’ll wake up and start working again, like this evening, when I came back to the Den. It’s a really nice keyboard – thank you sweetheart! 🙂 So, as I said, in all the excitement, I completely forgot that I was supposed to do a Stair Walk after (or before) lunch – je suis désolé! 😦 So, anyway, getting back to Rift, I finally managed to sort out and clean up Crystalsong’s mad mix up of quests. The unfortunate side of which is that she’s almost too “old” for the quests she’s still got left (they’re all green now, and on the verge of going grey, which means that she won’t get any experience for doing them – but if she doesn’t do them, she won’t get the “breadcrumb” quests to go on to the next areas. It’s complicated…) I’ve taken her back to Sanctum, cleaned out her bags, and sent her waterbreathing necklace off to Zorcha, the next one in line to be taken to level 20. “Lucky” Zorcha has also had the somewhat dubious honour of being made “Dimension Mistress”, which means that she’ll be responsible for all things to do with Dimensions, from building, furnishing, and maintaining them, to receiving unwanted Dimension good and items from the rest of the Guild. She’s gunna need a whole lot of the biggest bags obtainable – which means, I suppose, that I’ll have to make someone an Outfitter as soon as possible, and train him or her up quickly so that they can start making Empyrean Bags (which have 28 slots, as opposed to the 24 slot Lanzan Bag) The only thing is, to buy the materials to make these bags costs a lot of platinum – unless you’re a high enough level to go out and farm them yourself (about level 65? I have no-one on Hailol anywhere near that level – yet!), it’s really cheaper to buy them ready made… I’ll see how the money goes. What I should have done is get Jademoss, my level 65 Outfitter on Laethys, to make half a dozen or so Empyrean Bags and give them to the “courier”, who could have transferred them over to Hailol… ain’t hindsight wunnerful?!

Weigh-in this morning. A bit better – I didn’t quite lose those three points that I gained yesterday, but I lost two of them. I’m back down to 100.6kg – not quite where I wanted to be at this point in time! And that was after I did my lunchtime Stair Walk yesterday – which I forgot to do today (O.K., I was rather distracted, alright?!) so one wonders what my weight will be tomorrow, seeing as I didn’t get that extra bit of exercise today. *sigh* Maybe I should write it on the back of my hand in biro – or better still, waterproof marker pen: “Don’t forget to have your pre-lunch Stair Walk today!” Come to think of it, I might not even be here around lunch time tomorrow…

Anyway, stay tuned tomorrow night for more interesting and amazing news from chez nous – we didn’t go shopping today because himself had to drive my favourite eldest daughter around, and the doctor was running behind (she always does – she’s a very good, and very popular Doctor!) so by the time he got home, we had lunch, and the parcel arrived, we didn’t have time to go shopping 😦 Well, we could have gone shopping, but it would have been very rushed, because himself had some work to do (read: a lot of work to do!) for the Body Corporate meeting this evening – and I really, really hate being rushed when I’m shopping for things like rugs, and clothes, and scatter cushions – it takes all the fun out of it! So we’ll go tomorrow (casts ominous look at Julian) won’t we, dear! So, if I am here, I’ll do my pre-lunch Stair Walk, if we’re out, I’ll do it as soon as we get home, as long as we get home before three o’clock – after that, it’ll really be too close to my après-midi Stair Walk at 5.00pm… However, I will be able to tell you if we found a rug for the lounge room, and if I managed to find myself a pair of slacks with pockets, for once, and what other adventures we had at The Glen (there’s a Laura Ashley there, too – I want to get one of their latest catalogues, to see if they still have semi-decent coffee tables…) So until this time tomorrow night, bee good, try to contain your impatience for the answers to all of your questions – all will be explained to you in due course, and… stay safe! 😉 ciao, all! 🙂

“Well, Happy Birthday, me!” said my stupid body, and promptly added an extra three points to my weight total! Gaaaa! So I’ve had to do a third Stair Walk today – it should have been before lunch, but I didn’t remember until I was half way through (my lunch) so I went after lunch instead… tomorrow, I’ll remember. But anyway –

Apart from that weight gaining business in the morning (I knew those fluid retaining pills were going to catch up with me sooner or later! Thank heavens that tomorrow’s the last day of them for a while!) today was a very nice day – Josh, my hairdressing friend came over and did my hair for me, even though he had heaps of work to do at home; Julian’s “Plan A” Birthday present didn’t arrive in time (even though it was ordered over a month ago), so he went and organised a “Plan B” Birthday present – which also didn’t arrive in time, so he had to fall back to “Plan C” Birthday present, which was most gratefully received! It was a box of Estée Lauder products – moisturisers, eye creams, etc. I used them tonight – they feel absolutely delicious on your skin! Mind you, I don’t really think they’ll make me look any younger, but they do make you feel good using them 🙂 I have no idea whatsoever as to what the “Plan A” and “Plan B” presents are, or where they’re coming/had to come from, but no doubt I’ll find out soon enough (maybe even tomorrow! I hope so!) Ah, yes! Tomorrow! Himself has to play Taxi for my favourite eldest daughter again tomorrow – she has an appointment to see her GP – and he has a Body Corporate meeting tomorrow night – but I received a Birthday present voucher from Autograph, and one from My Size – and one from Zierra shoes (even though I haven’t bought anything from them for about ten years! I hate shoes!) As you can imagine though, the ones from Autograph and My Size are burning holes in the pockets I never seem to be able to get in slacks, and although I’m not the teeniest bit interested in Zierra’s shoes (shudder!), they do sell quite nice handbags as well! 😉 So that’s what I’m hoping to do tomorrow, when Julian gets back from his Taxi driver role – go shopping! Maybe at The Glen – there’s a largish rug shop there, as well as the other three shops mentioned above, and I want to start looking for a new rug for the lounge room, now that the new furniture is in place. We could also go to Target for scatter cushions for the sofa bed, too, while we’re there… Hmmm… I don’t know if the reason that I like shopping so much is because it gets me out of the apartment, or if it’s because I just like spending money! 😉 I think it’s the former…

I did Rift for a bit this morning – I organised the Guild Bank Vaults, now that we’ve got a third one, there’s lots more room (something tells me that it won’t be long before it’s chock-a-block too, though! A fourth Guild Bank Vault will cost 3000 platinum, so I think it’s probably a good idea to start saving for it now!) and I’d just finished doing that when I remembered that I was going to do my nails this afternoon, so I’m afraid poor old Crystalsong didn’t get much of a run around today. I didn’t use the new Willow Byron Bay luscious raspberry red nail polish today, I used the Inglot “breathable” red nail polish instead – dunno why, I just wanted to, is all… I’ll use the Willow Byron Bay one next week (it is a really glorious red!) Before I went and did my nails, however, I went and created the new Pisces emblem/icon/symbol (I can never remember what it’s called!) in the blog header – I didn’t really like the other one – it just looked “half baked” to me, somehow, so I made this one instead. It’s actually a combination of two fonts, a “buton” dingbat font for the background, with the same Pisces font as I used for the old one that I didn’t like, only smaller, for the top bit. I think this one turned out not too badly – I’ll probably let it stay for the week 🙂

Weigh-in this morning – well, the surprise is spoilt – I’ve already told you what a disaster it was! You’d think, wouldn’t you, that on an important day, like my 39th Birthday, that for once my body could do something nice for me, like losing a few points, or even staying the same – but no, it put on three points, taking me from yesterday’s slim and svelte 100.5kg, back to fat and slobby 100.8kg! 😦 Well, only one more day on those wretched pills, then maybe I’ll be able to shed some of this fluid that I’ve been jealously and greedily hoarding for the past nine and three quarter days! So, it’s finally arrived! The “Three Stair Walks A Day” era has dawned! Actually, it’s a lot easier and quicker than trying to organise myself to do exercise exercises (if you know what I mean!) According to himself, it takes me approximately 8 to 9 minutes, from the time I exit the apartment, to the time I re-enter it (“we probably should time it,” says himself – what a good idea! We’ll do that tomorrow morning, ‘K? 🙂 ) so it’s really no hassle to get up before lunch to do a third SW – I don’t really mind it at all (in fact I quite like it, as long as the lobby doesn’t reek of sour, acrid burnt garlic, or whatever else is causing the foul stench in there sometimes!) – it’s just the fact that it’s been more or less forced on me that rankles!

So anyway, call back tomorrow night and hear all the latest from moi-même – did I go shopping? Did we find a new rug for the lounge room? (or the spare room, or the hallway) Did I manage to find a pair of slacks with pockets in them? Why don’t I look in Target for clothes, now that I’ve dropped a bit of weight – they do have a Big Girls section… (good point! I might look there, if we go in to look for scatter cushions – kill two birds with the one stone, so to speak! 😉 ) and also – how are the new Estée Lauder products working out? Do I look any younger yet? (well, I can tell you the answer to that, right now, tonight! The answer is “No! But they sure do feel nice! 😉 ) and what about my weight? Will my body decide to apologize, and go down five points, to make up for it? All these questions will be answered for you, right here, this time tomorrow night – you won’t want to miss out on the exclusive exposé! So until tomorrow night, bee good, don’t eat too much, and please, stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

What a (Telaran) day! Well, we didn’t just scoot off to Ember Isle, though having finished the quests in Moonshade Highlands, we were sent off to the Droughtlands… where it seemed to be a matter of: we’d glare hard at the mobs, and they’d fall over dead! Just too easy! So after about five minutes of this glaring at mobs, them dying, and us collecting the loot, we weren’t sure what to do. We debated about Ember Isle, but we really didn’t have any way of getting there (yet) so we tried Shimmersand, the area you go to when you’ve finished in the Droughtlands. We didn’t have a “breadcrumb” quest to go there, either, but I know where the Shimmersand starting quests are, and we managed to pick them up, no problemo! Unfortunately, it was Invasion Day in Shimmersand, and they were level 50+ invaders! Why the goodness they want to put level 50+ invasions in a level 43 – 49 area, I have no idea – maybe it’s supposed to be what we’ve just been grizzling about – as a “challenge”, for uppity little Mages who think they’re really hot! Well, it was a challenge, alright! 😦 I died… I got charged at by a level 56 mountain, and sustained more than flesh wounds. I was not amused! Anyway, these gruesome little “challenges” don’t last all that long (thank heavens!) and we made sure we did all the quests that stayed out of the invasion paths first! Once the invasion segment was over, it was quite good, actually – we’re level 42 now – we were level 41 when we started, so we did go up a level – and although the mobs were between level 50 and 56 – some of them Elite (that is, extra rough, tough, and hard to kill) we managed to hold our own against them with relative ease! Sure, it took a little longer to knock them down when we were fighting solo, or more than one mob at a time, but all in all, I can see us getting bored with this fairly soon. Mind you, we are coming up to a very complicated and reasonably hard set of quests (which are all Orange, by the way – one step away from the supposedly impossible to finish and still live “Red” quests) They’re the lead-up to the Flatyard quests – personally, I think these lead-up quests are harder than the Flatyard ones, but that’s just me (I actually have a lovely Dimension set in the Flatyard “area” of Castle Fortune – it’s called “Palazzo del Destino” – go have a look at it sometime – it’s on the Laethys shard) We’ve got the initial quest to go there, so we’ll be having fun with that next week. Himself died once today, too – when we first got to the area just prior to the Flatyard beginnings – but it’s better than being bored! 🙂

Now that the lift is back in action, the new entertainment unit is in, and the spare room only needs a rug and some scatter cushions, the time has come for me to start making…. (dramatic music, please!)  …A List! Yes! This is the year of the new me… and the new apartment! Well, not a “new” apartment – we’ve decided not to move – but if we’re staying here, then I want this apartment to get a face lift. Or a paint and curtain lift – but definitely changed for the better. We want to do a lot of things that will require some structural changes – f’rinstance, we’re horribly short on wall space for picture hanging , etc. yet in the lounge room, we have one whole, entire wall that’s curtained off all the time. Why? Because the window behind the curtain looks directly into the apartments across the pocket-handkerchief garden, and the balcony outside that window has some rather unattractive air conditioning compressors glaring through the window at you if you open the curtains. I want to wall off that window, inside and out, leaving only one small section of window on that side of the room. It’s such a waste! All that expanse of curtain, all that wasted wall space – I want it back! And I want to change the curtains in the lounge room – but – we don’t know what we want to replace them with! Drapes? Been there, done that, didn’t look as good as we thought they would. Roman Blinds are an option, especially now that we can have them remote-controlled, so as not to have to cut the sides of our hands hauling on those thin “strings” to lower and raise the curtains. Venetians wouldn’t work… and over the years we’ve used different Curtain Manufacturers (Victory, Luxaflex, Kresta, Laura Ashley, to name a few) and they’ve all made very bad and totally inexcusable blunders – two curtains for the same window (pull across drapes) one side with the pattern upside down? Two windows the same size – one set of blinds several – not inches, but feet – too small? That sort of thing. And because I want a new coffee table for the lounge room, tonight, my darling husband asked me “what was I looking for in a coffee table!” I just looked at him, tight-lipped. That was when I told him I was going to make “A List” (he always whimpers when I threaten to make “A List” 😉 ) Actually, we do need a list, in order to organise everything, but more importantly, so we can tell the builder exactly what we want, without dithering and saying “I thought you said”, and “No, you misunderstood! I don’t like fluorescent lime green!”

You may have noticed the little Pisces symbol on the header… that’s because it’s my Birthday week – I knocked it up just before I started writing this blog tonight. No, I will not tell you how old I am – all you need to know is that I’m “Old Enough” 😉 And amongst my family and friends, whoever is having a Birthday will have their Zodiac sign posted in the header for their Birthday week too – I can’t remember who’s next, I’ll have to look it up…

Weigh-in this morning. Well, still no pre-prandial Stair Walks on the horizon for me – yet! I weighed in at 100.5kg, only one point down on yesterday, but at least it was down. And, only two more days of those horrible fluid loving and retaining pills to go… Unfortunately, unless a miracle occurs, I won’t make “double figures” by my Birthday, but hopefully I won’t be too far off it!

So call back tomorrow night and see what we’ve all been up to – will I have made my List? Probably not, but I’ll certainly be thinking about it. My gold nail polish is still hanging on – and who said that you can’t file and shape painted nails? I think it must be an urban myth, because one of my nails had a snag in it this morning, and it was catching on everything – so I sighed, and filed it down anyway, without removing the polish first, as I’ve always been taught to do – it worked perfectly well, and didn’t damage the polish (well, not too much, anyway!) Oh, next Sunday, we won’t be “Tripping the Light Fantastic in Telara” – because we’ll be having a double BBB! Julian missed out on his Big Birthday Bash because the lift was out, so we’ve decided that we can both have our Big Birthday Bash in the one foul swoop! As usual, I’ll have mineral water and an Optifast bar for lunch. Everyone else will have champagne, Nando’s chicken tenders, chips, a nice leafy green salad (home made), and Birthday Cake (of one sort or another) – but that’ll be next week’s news! Tomorrow night you’ll get all the latest about everything going on chez nous, almost as it happens! 🙂 So until then, bee good, have a glass of champagne for me, and above all, stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

Well, I worked my poor fingers to the bone this morning – I’ve almost sorted out Crystalsong’s weird conglomeration of quests, but not quite. I still have two “green” quests to finish off before I can move on to the three “yellow” ones – which will probably have to wait until next week now, as I won’t have time to do anything more tonight (by the time I finish this, and then attend to my Auctions and Minion Offerings, it’ll be almost midnight!) and tomorrow is our “Pillaging and Burning In Telara, For Fun and Profit” day… Still, Crystalsong is now level 16, so that’s not bad going, considering that I’ve been working through the “greenies” which don’t award quite as many experience points as the yellow quests do. The gentleman who was coming to help move and re-set up the giant TV arrived early this morning – most annoying, as we were just about to have our breakfast! We ended up having quite a late breakfast because it took a while to get everything set up and working properly (and I must say that it did look a right mess until later this afternoon when we finally had a chance to clean it all up!) After breakfast, Julian shot off to do the shopping as quickly as possible because the other gentleman caller we were expecting today, the guy who was going to give our old entertainment unit a good home, was coming at 2.00pm – thank goodness he wasn’t early! He was on time though, and once again, it seemed to take forever for the two of them to wrestle the unit downstairs and tie it securely into his… ute? van? I dunno, “vehicle”! Once himself came back from that we had a cup of coffee, then, with me “supervising” 😉 he started putting everything from the old entertainment unit away in the new one. By dinner time, it was all put away, the floor was swept clear of all the little bits of cat fluff from underneath the old unit, and all the little polystyrene crumbs from the packing that had been around the new one. It all looks very nice now! The lounge room rug is going back into the lounge room until we get a chance to go out looking for a new one, after which it will (probably) go into the spare room (or the hall!) and the new one (or two!) will go into the lounge room (and/or the spare room) We must go to Target and get two or three scatter cushions…

I also messed around with graphics a bit while the guys were busy wrestling with unwieldly cabinets – I’m now into my fourth day of messing around with recalcitrant graphics. I’m starting to get annoyed. I have to say, though, that even after all this time, I haven’t lost my touch with removing unwanted watermarks from “Free” and “Royalty Free” images! *smirk* I’ll get there one day (with this project) – there’s no hurry for it or anything – it’s for myself, anyway, so I can take as long as I like over it… I just find it… a needless annoyance that I can’t find anything that I really like enough to want to use in this project. F’rinstance, why can’t the symbol for Pisces be twin cats, running in different directions? I’m sure I could find cats that I could use… fish are so… so… I dunno, fishy! (Winter has a sudden idea: what… about… catfish! Yeah! I could use catfish in a Pisces design! *quickly starts googling images of cat fish*)

Weigh-in this morning. I was most gratified! I went down to 100.6kg – that’s three whole points! I wish I could do that every day…but I’ll probably stay the same for a fortnight, now! Or go up… Well, there’s always the third Stair Walk if I do! I went on my Stair Walk this evening – around 5.00pm, as usual, and Julian came with me, also as usual. But while we were watching TV before I had this weird feeling that I hadn’t done it, so I said to Julian “Did I do my Stair Walk this evening? I just have the strangest feeling that I didn’t” He confirmed that indeed, I had done my S.W., and that he was with me and saw me doing it. Unfortunately, while I know that I did do it, even now, I have this strange compulsion to go out and do it again, because I didn’t do it before! Does any of that make any sense to you all? I know – it doesn’t to me, either. *gasp!* Could it be Alzheimer’s?! Already?! 😦 Nooooooo! (actually, this is rather good! I shall (hopefully) worry another three or four points off my weight, now that I’m all concerned that I might be developing Alzheimer’s. There’s only one thing wrong with that premise though – I’m so darn lazy that I know it would be too much effort to be bothered worrying about! ) *sigh*

Anyway, drop by this time tomorrow night and see what we’ve been up to – how did we go in Telara? Will we decide to toss these wimpy quests in and head for Ember Isle (where we’ll probably die a number of times – I remember one place there where they’re all Elites, there’s an awful lot of them, and they’re very, very tough (well, they were, once upon a time – but will they still be? That is the question!))? Or will we continue our long, slow slog through Mathosia (the section of Telara we’re currently in) even if only to gain Achievements, Titles, and Notoriety with various factions? (the higher your Notoriety, the more discounts, freebies, money and goodies you get from that faction!) And who knows? 😉 You will, this time tomorrow night! 🙂 My gold nail polish is slowly chipping away – will it last until my Birthday on Monday? Or will I be forced to change it before that? You’ll find that out tomorrow night, too! Ah yes, but what about my weight? Will you find out whether or not I went up, stayed the same, or went down? Of course you will! You know by now that I’ll grizzle and cry a lot if it goes up (or stays the same!) and be all happy and cheerful if it goes down…  So until this time tomorrow, bee good, have a fun long weekend (but not too fun, y’hear me?! 😉 ) and above all, stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂