Another day of mixed variables… This morning, after breakfast, I was called to the lounge room. As the people who are going to assist with the moving and re-setting up of our giant TV are going to be here tomorrow morning (bright and early – around 9.00am) the drawers and the cupboards of the old entertainment unit and side tables had to be cleaned out. And by “cleaned out“, Julian usually means “thrown out”, and so to prevent any tears when I find out that my favourite scrap of paper in all the universe (the one with the scribbled drawing by one of the kids when they were four) has been thrown out, I have to be there to “supervise” the culling of the treasures. Five drawers, plus only the top shelf of the old entertainment unit later, our cleaning lady arrived – early (for once! and just when we wanted her to be late so that we could get all the sorting out finished!) After sitting around and chatting for a bit, I came back down here to the Den and caught up with my Auctions and Minion Offerings on Rift. I did get Nuha up to level 20, and started on my next victim character. A Guardian, this time – the ill-named Copperfire, who has now been re-named to Crystalsong, received the waterbreathing necklace from Nuha, and off we went. My goodness, what a mish-mash I’d left her in! A completely jumbled mix of “baby and teen” quests (so to speak) She was level 12 – a  little bit old for the starting “baby” quests, but not quite old enough for the next quest chains along. Apparently I’d taken her across to Freemarch to close Rifts and get some planarite (which is simply not possible in Silverwood, as I’ve said in an earlier blog) but I’d totally neglected to get her started in any of the three “Basic” skills – Foraging, Mining, and Butchering. Normally with Guardian characters, as soon as we get to Silverwood, I grab the Porticulum there, train up in those three basic skills, run down the hill and grab the “Close the Rifts and get planarite” quests, then swim over to Freemarch and do the planarite and Rift-closing quests – before I pick up the first available quests in Silverwood. Then I run around Freemarch killing and skinning wolves, mining, and picking whatever herbage there is to pick, leveling up my basic skills, looking for Artifacts, dodging Defiant Guards, and grabbing the only Porticulum over there (apart from Meridian, and that Porticulum is in the very centre of the Defiant capital!) So I scratched my head a bit at where Crystalsong’s questing and skills were at (or perhaps that should be “weren’t at”!)  Long story short, I sorted her out as best I could in Silverwood, got her basic training done, didn’t have to swim over – apparently I’d already done that because I had the Denegar’s Stand Porticulum – so that’s where I went. However! There was a fly in my ointment, because the Carnival of the Ascended has entered its second stage. The Parades have started, and all the roads are thronged with Defiant guards, bearing “red name plates” (that means that they are extremely hostile to anything not Defiant – and as a Guardian, they will attack you on sight – so it’s a good idea to stay off the roads!) This is problematical, as there are hostile mobs off the road which will attack you, no matter what faction you belong to. Usually that wouldn’t bother me, but as a level 12, it’s not really a terribly good idea to try to fight off level 16 wolves and wild boars! Six of one, half a dozen of the other – level 45 hostile guards, or level 16 hostile wolves and wild boars – either of them will kill you just as dead! I did a lot of zigging and a lot of zagging… I found a lot of Artifacts, I butchered, foraged, and mined, and I got my “Merchant of Death” title! Then I came back to Silverwood, where I’m gradually getting my quests sorted out and back into order, but it’s been like trying to comb out a plate of soggy, tangled spaghetti!

After lunch I did a bit more graphic work – I’m beginning to see a dim and distant light at the end of the tunnel, at last, but I’m still not satisfied… I’ll do a bit more tomorrow… I also received a new url on pigeon genetics from Josh – it’s extremely interesting and I’m going through it. It’s just a tad more complicated than Siamese cats because there are more variations on a theme, but the basic principles are the same – it’s really just a matter of learning what those variations are, and how they present in the Phenotype (that is, how the characteristics display on the bird) Genetics really is a fascinating subject! Thanks Josh! 🙂

Julian went off to have his scan this afternoon, in Coburg! It was the only place that could do it today, so he got home very late this afternoon, and I did my afternoon Stair Walk on my own. We use a book to prop open the Fire Escape door as you can’t enter the building from the Fire Escape, only leave it; we had a close call the other day – someone saw the book and was about to make off with it, before Julian stopped them. It’s not the end of the world if the door does close on us, it just means that you have to walk all the way down to the ground floor, exit the building by the Williamson’s Road exit, walk around the building to the other entrance, come in through there (if you’ve remembered to bring your keys!) take the lift up to the floor you want the door open on, and let whoever’s stuck in there, out. Well, I had my keys… I also had bare feet, and I don’t think walking around outside in bare feet would have done them, or me, any good. Luckily no-one removed the book this afternoon! I’m going to make up signs to put on both sides of the 5th floor Fire Escape door! “Please do NOT remove this book! Someone is exercising on the stairs and needs to be able to get back in!” – or words to that effect. I’m a little perturbed though – several times in the afternoons we’ve noticed a terrible smell – it’s more of a stench, really – of terribly, terribly strong, acrid garlic. We’re not sure where it’s coming from – it seems to be coming from one of the two apartments on the other side of this floor, and it really is terrible! This afternoon it was so bad I nearly threw up – truly! I had to cover my mouth and nose and try to hold my breath as I almost ran from the Fire Escape door to our front door! (can you imagine? Me? Running?! The mind positively boggles, and I don’t think it would do the foundations of this building much good, either!) I’m wondering if it can be brought up, diplomatically, at the next Body Corporate committee meeting. If it can’t be fixed, I’ll have to get some sort of gas mask (no, I’m not kidding Julian!) to be able to continue my afternoon Stair Walks – or we’re going to have to go somewhere else with stairs for me to do them – but this afternoon was beyond a joke!

Weigh-in this morning. Well, still no lunchtime Stair Walks for me – not yet, anyway. I weighed in at 100.9kg – not as low as I would have liked, but at least I went down (even if only one point) and didn’t stay the same again. Let’s see what tomorrow brings! I’m more than half way through this lot of fluid retaining pills… the end is in sight…

So tune in again this time tomorrow night – find out what the new and improved entertainment unit looks like “in situ”! See if I can eke my gold nail polish out for another day (it’s beginning to chip – just a bit!) and if my weight bucked the trend and went up… annoyed me by staying the same, or gladdened my heart by going down by more than one point! All these questions, and more, will be given to you on a silver platter, this time tomorrow night! So until then, bee good, stop doing that!, and… stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

Boy-o-boy! What a day – we were woken somewhere between 3.30am and 4.00am when Neale, my favourite eldest daughter’s husband, rang us to say that she was back in hospital with more chest pains. He’d give us updates as they became available. So then it was lie awake and worry, worry, worry… time passed… eventually we heard that no, she wasn’t having another heart attack (she’d had one small one some time ago) This time, however, they didn’t let her come home, they kept her there for the rest of the “night”, and for most of today, doing tests and x-rays and what-not. The long and short of it is, they don’t have a clue what the problem was. According to the hospital, it could have been anything from bad indigestion, to a panic/anxiety attack, but as far as they could tell, her heart was fine. Some small comfort in that, I suppose… I’ve only had a panic attack twice in my life – both totally unexpected and out of the blue (and both times while I was driving, would you believe?!) I’d read about panic attacks, of course, but the first time it happened to me it took me completely by surprise. I was driving along, minding my own business – I think I was going to pick the kids up from school, or something terribly mundane and boring. I came up to a “controlled” (traffic lights) T-intersection at the top of the street, started a right hand turn when the lights said I could, and all of a sudden! Woosh! The adrenaline started pumping, my hands got sweaty and clammy, I got  a very bad case of butterflies in my tummy, and I thought “??!! AArrgggh!”, and then I thought, almost with a sense of wonderment “I think I’m having a panic attack! Oh, I wonder why?!”, and it went away. I don’t think it liked being recognised So, anyway, I know what a panic attack feels like, but I would never have thought that maybe I was having a heart attack… This isn’t the first time that Lee has had these sorts of episodes, however if after testing for certain enzymes, and scans and x-rays to show any sort of heart damage, the medics can’t find anything wrong, well, maybe anxiety attacks are different from panic attacks, or different people experience them in different ways, and that’s what it was. Anyway, she’s home again now, and hopefully it’ll be the last “mystery” attack for at least a couple of months (so as to let my hair grow back in again!)

Neale had to go to work, so that left Julian to fend for Lee when she was told she could come home (fairly late this afternoon, as it turned out) – in the meantime, we had the fun arrival of our new furniture, which was all terribly exciting because the entertainment unit almost proved to be too big for the lift (but they managed to squeeze it in in the end), and the delivery guys had to take the legs off the sofa bed because the corridor it had to fit down to get to the spare room was too cramped and tight – according to Julian, we nearly ended up with no entertainment unit, and no sofa bed! But they’re in now, and the two new side tables in the lounge room look much more betterer than the old ones (which now look much more betterer in the spare room, on each side of the sofa bed) We’re getting there! 🙂 Admittedly, fairly slowly, but then we’ve been without a lift for most of that “slowly”!

I Rifted for most of the morning, and spent most of my time turning Persha into an Apothecary. I went through everyone I had, looking to see who could do what. We need an Apothecary badly – they make potions and stuff. I also woke up to the fact that they can also make Augments, that any Crafter can use with the goods that they make, so I guess once I designate an Outfitter (they make clothes and some forms of Armor) and start making gear for everyone, Persha will be kept pretty busy making Augments to boost everyone’s clothing stats. But the main reason I needed an Apothecary today, was because we don’t have very many healing potions in the Guild Bank, and what’s more, no-one seems to be making them and putting them up on the Auction house! So I thought “Damn it! I’ll make my own! Who can I turn into an Apothecary?”, and Persha drew the short straw. Still, I got her up to Grand Master Apothecary today – but it was just too expensive to get her up to Savant status – that’ll have to wait – and it’s not as though we’re in dire need of level 60 Healing Potions – yet! 😉 However, I now have a list of all my boys and girls, and what skills they have, so now I can decide who’s going to do what. At the moment, Winterthyme is a Runecrafter (Runes are sort of like Augments, in that they give items boosts (read: better stats)), and Rubyfox is a Dreamweaver (she makes Dimension stuff – not that we need any, the Minions are brining in enough to sink a couple of aircraft carriers!) – and that’s about it, at the moment. We must move the extra platinum and goods from Laethys to Hailol toot sweet – we’re starting to get desperate for funds and Guild Bank Vaults – I’m afraid that Persha’s little Training spree cost nearly 300 platinum 😦

And after luncheon I did a bit more graphic work. Can anyone tell me why, when you go looking for “Free” and “Royalty Free” images, you keep being given so-called “freebies”, covered in watermarks and logos?  Of course, the site will happily remove these unsightly marks – if you pay them a fairly hefty fee for their pains. I tell you what, it makes my blood-sweat-and-tears boil, when they try to pull that one on me! Luckily, I know a couple of techniques to remove most of those watermarks. But it’s a pain – lots of tedious, close up work, but then again – why not? The images are being offered to you as “Free”, and “Royalty Free”. I’m still not happy with what I’ve achieved with zodiac signs, though…  I’ll keep working on it…

Weigh-in this morning. Hmmm.. Maybe I did mozz myself last night – I was the same weight again this morning! 101.0kg If I don’t go down tomorrow, it’ll be the (*gasp*, *shock*, *horror*) Pre-Lunch Third Stair Walk pour moi! 😦 Let’s hope I go down again tomorrow, so that it doesn’t have to come to that…

So anyway, look in on us again tomorrow night – find out how my (seemingly fruitless) search for really-truly free, and royalty free garphics is coming along – will I have managed to remove part, or all, of the watermarks on the supposedly Free (and Royalty Free) images?! My gold leaf nail polish has been taking a bit of a pounding, writing this blog an’ all; I’m hoping that it will last until next week, but we’ll just have to wait and see if it’ll remain intact enough for that. Most importantly, will my weight have gone down, or will I be trudging off before lunch every day for a third daily Stair Walk? These questions, “and many, many more”, will be answered, right here, this time tomorrow night! Don’t be the only one to miss out on all the new news! 😉 So until this time tomorrow night, bee good, don’t stand around out in the rain, and… stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

Today was a bit of a mixed bag again – I spent most of the morning unzipping and installing the nine new zodiac fonts I downloaded last night, and then trying them out. I’m still not completely satisfied with them – they’ll definitely need more work – and if I can’t get the effect I want with the fonts, then I’ll just have to find royalty free graphics, and try to use them instead *sigh* Why doesn’t anybody ever have what I want?! Himself went off for his scan today… when he rang up to book it, they told him is was a “fasting” test, and to “go to the bathroom” before he arrived for the scan. So he did. He didn’t have tea or coffee this morning, and he didn’t have any breakfast. He drove off with an empty bladder, arrived for his scan, and was told “Oh no dear, it’s not a fasting test, and we need you to have a full bladder!” The scan is to be “re-scheduled”! It can’t be tomorrow, because we’re expecting all that furniture to arrive, we just don’t know what time it’ll be arriving, so he can’t re-schedule for any time tomorrow – and Friday was also fully booked – however it turns out that the people we were getting in on Friday to re-locate the enormous TV (Julian can’t move it on his own – it’s too big and heavy) who were supposed to be coming  are short handed at the moment, so they’re coming on Saturday morning instead – which leaves Friday free, after all. So he’ll try to re-schedule the scan for sometime on Friday. Our cleaning lady will be (should be) here on Friday, and I can cope with her on my own (mostly she just sits and smokes and talks, anyway! Then she gives the place a (very) quick lick and vacuum, and she’s off…) Depending on what time he can get an appointment, he’ll probably be back before she’s finished (maybe even before she arrives!) Anyway, after I’d spent a largely fruitless morning slaving over hot zodiac fonts, I got into a bit of relaxing mayhem on Rift – Nuha is now level 17. I thought I might have got him to level 20 today, but himself, greatly disgruntled with his wasted and hungry morning, suggested a bit of Rifting together. It sounded like a good idea, so after lunch we embarked on an hour’s worth of fun and killing in Telara. Again, we noticed how quickly and easily we were knocking off mobs that we both remember as being fiendishly difficult, not all that long ago – now, they’re barely annoyances – small nuisances holding us up on our way to completing a quest, because they’re in our way and we have to stop and waste time killing them. I wonder if it’s worth mentioning our concerns in the Rift Forums? It would be interesting to see if anyone else has noticed the same lack of difficulty and challenge… I’ll suggest that to himself later tonight…  Honestly, the way things are going at the moment, I reckon that even though we’re both only level 41, we could probably move on to Ember Isle (level 50 quests and mobs) any time we wanted to. It’ll probably be best if as soon as we know when the furniture is arriving, that I ensconce myself in here (the Den) and immerse myself in all things Telaran for the duration – in other words, keep out of everyone’s way until it’s all over! 🙂 Which should give me a chance to get Nuha a little further along in his quest to level 20.

I’m starting to get interested in genetics all over again – I studied it quite a bit, back when I was breeding Siamese (any legitimate licensed breeder has to know – or at least have a fair idea – of what they’re likely to get in a litter, depending on the parent’s pedigrees) I found it quite fascinating – f’rinstance Chocolate Point + Chocolate Point doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll get Chocolate Point kittens – you’re more likely to get a mixture of Blue Points (x 3), Lilac Points (x 1), and Chocolate Points(x 2), a ratio of 3:1:2 because (from memory, and it was a l-o-n-g time ago!) Chocolate Points are an off-shoot of Blue Points. Anyway, a friend sent me the url of a pigeon breeding site (he’s into pigeons, you see) with pictures of all the different colour combinations and their genetic makeup – unfortunately the site isn’t complete yet, so I couldn’t glean terribly much information from it (yet!) I may have to research further afield – but it’s managed to get me interested in genetics, all over again (ahhh… nostalgia!) and no Julian, I don’t intend to start breeding pigeons! And even though I still miss the patter of little paws, and kittens romping and playing on the bed every morning, I don’t intend to start breeding cats again, either! I’m just interested in genetics, alright?! 😉

Weigh-in this morning. Will wonders never cease? (I fervently hope not!!) I went down 2 points this morning, to 101.0kg! You do know what this means though, don’t you! It means that I’ll go up tomorrow, or worse, stay the same! So as yet, the third Stair Walk hasn’t had to be implemented – but I’ll be so chuffed if I’m down in the 100kg zone for my Birthday! I wish I hadn’t said that now 😦 It’s like washing the car to make it rain – because by having said that I’d be really chuffed if I made it to the 100kg zone by Monday, I’ve now doomed myself to going up, or staying the same, for about a week! *sob* Me and my big mouth – or should I say “me and my stupid, careless fingers! typing targets for the Gremlins to home in on!” Oh dear… I’m not looking forward to getting on the scales tomorrow!

Anyway, look in again tomorrow night – find out if the furniture arrived, and how it looks (probably a bit silly, because the new entertainment unit will sit empty, in front of the old unit, until Saturday, when the TV will get moved onto the new one, and that afternoon the old unit will be picked up by its new owner – so roll on Saturday afternoon!) The new side tables will be in place though, and the old ones will be dragged into the spare room to sit at either end of the new sofa bed – the lounge room rug might (or might not) go into the spare room too, which means that we’ll either have to look for a new rug for the lounge room, or a new rug for the spare room. So, 1 rug, 3 scatter cushions, and 1 throw rug, are all that stand between us, and a pleasant and welcoming spare room! 🙂 It’ll be so nice to have that room habitable again! 🙂 I’ll also let you know if I mozzed myself or not when I said I hoped I’d be down in the 100kg zone by Monday – you’ll be able to tell straight away, if I start the blog off with something like “I trod the stairs three times today…” Let’s all just hope and pray that I don’t! I’m sure there’ll be lots of other things to tell you, too, so until this time tomorrow night, bee good, drive carefully, and… stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

I actually managed to get a fair bit done on Rift today – for a while, anyway, and then things went a bit “wonky” on line –  f’rinstance, after killing a mob in order to get a quest item from it, that quest item was taking up to 6 seconds or more to start sparkling, leaving you to think that the “whatever it was” wasn’t carrying that quest item (it does seem to happen a lot – have you any idea how many animals are running around Telara with no brain? or only one eye?) and I wasn’t able to send mail – it was as though there were massive lag spikes, but it wasn’t lag… Apparently I wasn’t the only person having problems with these lag-like symptoms… Julian did too, when he logged on to see if he had the same problems (which he did) so he suspected a newly installed patch gone wrong. I tend to disagree – there’s been no patch or update – yet, anyway. Let’s see what tomorrow brings! I’d just managed to get Persha up to level 20 and was busy “tidying out her backpack” and trying to send bits and pieces off to Hialeah (the Auctionator and GB Overflow Mistress), and it kept telling me “Mail Delivery failed”. So rather than continue banging my head against a brick wall, I logged off and did some graphic work for about an hour – and when I got back on again, all was fixed! So I finished tidying up Persha, mailed her water breathing necklace off to the next lucky character to be dragged, kicking and screaming, all the way up to level 20. This time it’s one of my two male characters, Nuha (pronounced “Noo-Har”) – he’s a great big blue-skinned Bahmi who looks like a cross between Genghis Khan and a Genie. I managed to get him up two levels in the time I had left this afternoon, and with any luck, I might even get him up to level 20 tomorrow – if the Rift “engine” doesn’t chuck another wobbly, that is!

On the graphical side of things, I’ve been doing a bit more experimenting with zodiac signs, but I’m not happy with the fonts (dingbats?) I’ve got for them – there’s a few others I want to get, but I have to see if the download site is “safe” *sigh* Oh! I just found out that one of them is, anyway – oh, and so is the other one – ‘scuse me while I go download… Right! Got ’em! 🙂 I’ll have fun with those tomorrow! 🙂 Where was I? Oh yes, I remember… so I’ve been, and will continue to be, splitting my time between Rift, and a zodiacal (is there such a word? Never mind, there is now! 😉 ) project I’m working on. No, not just for this blog, it’s for “something else”, which I may, or may not tell you about when it’s ready (it depends on how well it turns out!) I’ve also been toying with the idea of picking up my paintbrush again – it’s been many, many, many years since I did any actual painting with oils and brushes – part of me would like to, but the other part of me says “stick to what you do best! stay with the digital painting! It’s a lot less messy, too!” so once again… it’s not so much a matter of “will I? or won’t I?”, it’s more a matter of “should I? or shouldn’t I?” Besides, we don’t really have the room here for a “studio”… We’d really need to move to a bigger place… I’d be able to draw/paint a lot more animate things (faces, horses, cats, trees, plants…) which are a lot harder to do digitally. Decisions, decisions…

And on the writing side, the next Episode of “The Adventures of Darth Carla” will be up by the end of the week, if anyone’s interested…

Weigh-in this morning. Still no third Stair Walk – yet! I’m going down in one point increments – I was down to 101.2kg this morning – I dread to think what it’s going to do tomorrow! Still, as long as it’s going down, even in only one point steps, it’ll stave off the third Stair Walk for the nonce. Poor Julian, I feel for him tomorrow morning – he’s having a scan done – fasting! – so no cup of tea, and no breakfast for him… and the scan’s not being done until midday!

My favourite eldest daughter went to see her Cardiologist today – she has to have another ECG next week, and she has to do a “Stress Test” (to see how the heart behaves “under load”) I had one done a couple of years ago, but as I couldn’t do it on the treadmill, mine was done chemically (so I wasn’t allowed to have caffeine for more than 12 hours! That in itself nearly killed me!) Lee has done a Stress Test too –  on a treadmill – about a year or so ago, and she was really on the point of collapse after that (actually I was scared silly at the state she was in after the test, and she’s put on more weight since then – I think her Cardiologist is bloody stupid extremely unwise to make her use the damn treadmill again!) So we’ll just have to wait and see what the results of his scan, and her Stress Test are, next week… *sigh* No wonder I’m going grey!

So drop by again this time tomorrow night to find out all the latest – my gold-leaf-like nail polish is still looking good – after the dark inky blackness of the other one, this one looks almost anaemic! I can’t wait to see what the red one looks like, next week! 🙂 I’m hoping that my favourite eldest daughter will be able to come over this Friday, as she won’t be able to get here on Thursday (the new entertainment unit is being delivered on Thursday, but because we don’t know what time it’s arriving, Julian won’t be free to go and pick her up until after it’s been delivered – and that might not be until the afternoon!) so if she’s coming over, it’ll have to be Friday… I’ll let you know if my weight behaves itself or not, and whether I’ve had to resort to the third Stair Walk or not – so, until this time tomorrow night – bee good, stop being naughty (at once!) and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

‘Tis the second day of Autumn, and as you can see, the little Header icon has changed to… er… an Autumn symbol! (quelle surprise!) Also, in honour of Autumn, I’ve changed my nail polish colour from a dark and brooding blue-black (Willow Byron Bay “Bonsoir” which, I might add, doesn’t look nearly as dark in their ad for it! The ad looks like a midnight sky lit up with starlight – in reality it looked more as though I’d painted my nails with thick, blue-black ink! A friend actually thought it was black!) So my nails are now a lovely Autumn-y gold! Actually, that’s not the reason I changed nail polish colours, I was going to change it to the gold anyway (it’s my new Willow Byron Bay “Sundance” which was next on my list to try) but it sounded good when I thought of it (well, I thought it sounded good, anyway!) Next week I’ll try out the luscious ripe, red raspberry, “Torakina” 🙂 My nails almost look as though they’ve been gilded (as in properly gilded, with real gold leaf!) Enough about my nails already! I was looking forward to seeing my favourite eldest daughter today – I haven’t been able to see her since the lift went out of commission on February 9th, but she rang this morning to say she wouldn’t be coming. She’d been in hospital overnight with chest pains and she just wanted to sleep. According to the tests they did at the hospital, she hadn’t had, and wasn’t in the process of having, (another) heart attack, and that it was probably just stress and anxiety (she’s already had one minor heart attack, so every little chest twinge starts off the worry and anxiety alarm bells) So it’s a worry. I wish I could find a way to get her to seriously start losing weight – I was 134kg when I started this diet, and she’s quite a bit bigger than that. She’s only 43 years old, and I feel quite helpless to do anything for her. Maybe this little “fright” will jolt her into action, but I really don’t feel terribly optimistic about it – and she won’t even contemplate my VLCD* 😦 I must be a bit weird, I think (no, actually I know I’m weird!) I’m eating approximately 750 calories (3138 kilojoules) a day, and I haven’t felt in the least bit hungry, all the way through this diet! I’m dropping around about a kilo a week, and if she could do that, she’d be a lot healthier – I know I am – and it might just save her life.

So anyway, after I’d had my hair done, I started fossicking around for Chinese symbols for the seasons. I already had Winter (my symbol), and now I have Autumn, Spring and Summer as well! 🙂 I plan on putting a different one up in the header each time the seasons change, with perhaps a special zodiac sign for the Birthday week of family and friends. After I’d made those, it was back to Rift again, and I worked on Persha (getting her up another level and a half) until just after lunch, when I went and started on my nails. By the time the second coat of the nail polish was dry, it was time for my afternoon Stair Walk, so I wasn’t able to get back to Rift again today. I’m not sure what’s happening tomorrow – himself is taking my favourite eldest daughter to see her Cardiologist tomorrow afternoon – I’ll be very interested to hear what he has to say! (probably something along the lines of “Lose some damn weight, woman!”, or words to that effect! I hope so, anyway!) so it looks like the coast is clear for me to do a bit of serious Rifting – I recorded last Thursday’s “Survivor: Worlds Apart”, and watched it yesterday. It’s an interesting premise – the eighteen contestants have been divided up into three groups of six, based on their positions/jobs and outlook on life, called respectively “White Collar”, “Blue Collar”, and “No Collar”. The “White Collar” team are exactly that – high executive type jobs. The “Blue Collars” are all manual type workers, and the “No Collars” are people without permanent employment – f’rinstance, one’s a coconut vendor, one’s a law student, one’s a trainee hairdresser (I think) – and as usual, their aim is to out-wit, out-play, and out-last everyone else, to win one million dollars. In the first immunity challence the teams had to scramble through an obstacle course. In the middle were three large boxes, all tied up with string, or chains with padlocks. The teams had the option of using keys to unlock the padlocks, or to untie all the knots in the strings. They all chose the keys and padlocks… for the first 2 minutes – but the hassle of finding which key out of a big bunch of keys unlocked a particular padlock – and they were all different – was simply too time consuming! It didn’t take long before, once again, all three teams switched to undoing the knotted strings. “White Collar” were quite a way ahead of the others. Once they got their boxes unlocked, they found a ladder inside – they were to use this ladder to help them get over the next part of the obstacle course, and then to reach one of a set of three bags containing puzzle pieces. The trick was for the team to hold the ladder upright while one person climbed up to get one of the three bags. One bag held 5 pieces, and formed a fairly simple jigsaw. One held 10 pieces of a more complicated and very visual type jigsaw, and the last bag held 50 square pieces which formed a very easy verbal and colour co-ordinated jigsaw. “Blue Collar” and “No Collar” both chose the 10 piece puzzle, “White Collar” (who were still ahead) chose… the one with 50 pieces! In the end, it was “No Collar” who won immunity, with “Blue Collar” winning second place. “White Collar” had to turn up to Tribal Council that night, and had one of their team voted out. And then they were five… It’ll be interesting to see what happens next week, with their first “reward” challenge, and their second “immunity” challenge!

Weigh-in this morning. Well, no need for the third Stair Walk just yet – I only went down one point, to 101.3kg, but still, it was down! It’ll most likely be “the same”, or up, tomorrow, and I do foresee a third Stair Walk on my horizon… Maybe tomorrow – maybe the day after… but I’m sure it’ll come to that

So look in again tomorrow night – see what’s been happening here at chez nous – will my gold nail polish have lasted? The jury’s still out on that one – one nail is still a little… sticky feeling? I’ll see how it goes over night… And what about Rift? Will I actually get poor, neglected Persha up to level 20 tomorrow? I should… shame on me if I don’t! Then there’s the question of what my weight decided to do – will I have been up and down those stairs three times, or only twice? Hopefully there’ll be some good news about my favourite eldest daughter’s health scare, and no doubt there’ll be lots of other things for me to brighten your evening with! So until this time tomorrow night, bee good, drive carefully, and… stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

*VLCD = Very Low Calorie Diet

Well, there it was, the first day of Autumn, and for Melbourne, the weather was, for once pleasant, cool, but not cold, warm, but not hot. There was no sign of rain, the sun shone, the birds sang (I think – we didn’t hear them – we were indoors) and the world was truly a wonderful place, as long as you lived in a nice safe city, far away from war and strife. And where were we? As I said before… huddled indoors over a hot screen and keyboard, merrily running around an imaginary land, killing imaginary monsters and gaining imaginary money for completing rather peculiar and largely senseless quests for imaginary people. When you put it like that, it makes us sound as though we’re ready for the – I was about to say “loony bin”, but then I realised that that term is probably considered extremely politically incorrect these days, so instead I’ll say… “ready for assisted living in a controlled environment”. After all, why use two simple words which say it all in a nutshell, when five will do instead? We all know what I mean, don’t we? 🙂

Yes, today was our day in beautiful downtown Telara, questing away in the Moonshade Highlands, home to Dwarven ghosts, bloodthirsty rams, and thieving Boglings. Add to the mix a lot of unhappy, zombie-like humanoids, mechanical metal giants, black wraiths, homicidal fairies, and antagonistic Guardians, and what have you got? A great game which keeps us occupied for hours and hours every day – well, it keeps me occupied for hours and hours every day, Julian doesn’t play nearly as much as I do – he spends most of his week sitting in the office, dealing with such mundane things as the banking, Body Corporate affairs, and keeping the household running. As we ran along, gathering strange items for our quests – things like shaking leaves, broken power cells, Bogling “essence” (whatever that it – all I know is that when we collected it, the Bogling it was being extracted from “disappeared“!) and things like that. We happened to run past a Rift, and we said “Shall we?” and we did. It just goes to prove the old adage “look before you leap”! If we’d looked, we would have seen that it wasn’t just your average, run of the mill Rift, it was a Nightmare Tide Rift. And what we didn’t work out until it was too late, was that we should have targeted the giant waving tentacles first! Oh well, we’ll know next time – that is if there is a next time! Personally, I don’t want to face another one of those until I’m level 65 or higher! I died. It wasn’t fair! Once we realised that we had to target the tentacles, and had almost finished closing down the Rift, I just… keeled over and died! I have no idea why, either. Oh, and guess what! It’s Carnival time in Telara at the moment, and dotted around the countryside are colourful little dragon shaped gas balloon piñatas, full of glass beads and occasionally, other goodies. Everyone rushes madly around “killing” these piñatas, and grabbing as many glass beads as they can. Why? Well, because you can exchange those glass beads at the World Event stall in the Rift Shop for all sorts of interesting things, from Venice-style face masks to costumes, to special mounts. All good fun – I think we managed to knock down about four piñatas, before we realised that we were being sidetracked and went back to our (very serious, you know!) questing. We went up two levels today – we’re now sitting at level 40, which is only 25 levels off the top of the ladder…  One of the sections we quested through today used to be a most dreaded area – the mobs are numerous, and used to be really, really tough. The quests are yellow (remember what I said a short while ago about the level of quests corresponding to the colour of the quest?) and should have been hard enough to have at least made us raise a sweat, but we were cutting through them like a hot knife through butter! No, it’s not that our playing has improved that much, and it’s not because we’re both Mages – even separating and soloing mobs was no problem – it’s a bit of a worry, actually… there simply wasn’t any challenge in it (apart from that Nightmare Tidal Rift, which should have been a “Raid” Rift (requiring twenty players or more), but there was only the two of us… I think we were pretty good to have lasted as long as we did, and that I only died once!) We’ve already decided that when we get to level 45 we’re not going to bother with any more quests in this section of the world, we’ll pack up and go straight to Ember Isle (Ember Isle used to be about as far as you could go, when the game was capped at level 50, so it’s not for babies!) And you know what? I reckon that even Ember Isle is going to be too easy for us… C’mon Trion Games! We want a little bit of a challenge put back into Rift!

Weigh-in this morning. Well, I know it was before I took that wretched fluid hugging pill this morning, but I went down to 101.4kg! Now, if I can do that tomorrow as well (I won’t, but if I did) it’d probably be within my reach to get into the 100kg zone by my Birthday! Wouldn’t that be great?! However… my 10 “doom and gloom” days have started – from here on in I shall probably either stay the same, or go up, as I slowly start to accumulate fluid 😦 I’m still considering an extra Stair Walk before lunch (well, it makes sense – before breakfast, before dinner, so why not before lunch – three meals, three Stair Walks – it just sounds right!) I think I’ve almost talked myself into it! 🙂

So tune in again this time tomorrow – there’ll be lots to tell you – my favourite eldest daughter will be over, my hair will look decent, and who knows? I might even have re-done my nails! (I didn’t get a chance to do them today – by the time we stopped playing, it was time for “walkies”, and if I’d done them after that, they wouldn’t have been dry by dinner time!) and I do so want to see what the gold (with the silver shimmer) looks like on my nails… I doubt that I’ll get much of a chance to do any Rifting, so you won’t have to put up with me telling you all about that – you will, however, have to put up with me telling you – or sobbing on your (collective) shoulders – about what my weight did, or didn’t do – whether it went up, or stayed the same (I’m betting on it going up – it was such a big drop this morning – there’s sure to be some re-bound!), and also how Lee and I spent the afternoon… So until this time tomorrow, bee good, sleep tight tonight, and please… stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

Well, it’s the last day of February today, the first day of Autumn tomorrow, and nine days until a certain Birthday. I’m glad that Summer went out with such a “bang”! We had a really spectacular storm burst here, complete with lightning, thunder, wind, and pouring rain 🙂 At one stage the rain was coming in horizontally against our lounge room windows – that was fun, and a little nerve wracking… when the wind and rain do that I’m always afeared that it’ll break the windows, or the balcony doors (like what happened to the apartment above us once!) Sadly, it all appears to have passed over now, and all is (relatively) calm. The weather report said that it got up to 32C in Melbourne today, but we were out in it all, and I didn’t think it was all that hot – it must have just been all the excitement of (finally) buying the entertainment unit, the two side tables, and the sofa bed! (does little dance of joy – mentally only! I’d still probably go through the concrete floor if I did that physically 😉 )They get delivered on Thursday – so the next thing to do is get the scatter cushions (hello, Target! 😉 ) and a floor rug… hmm… I wonder if we could put the rug from the lounge room into the spare room – we’d have to measure, but I don’t think it would be too big – and get a new rug for the lounge room? Julian? The lounge room rug is about eight years old, and a lot “cat-worn” – and if we’re going to change the lounge room curtains, maybe the rug should get a makeover too? Yes? No? Indifferent?

Well, as I said, we were out most of this morning and early afternoon. Julian needed a new script, and I wanted to get mine re-done. The last time we went to the Doctors was to get new scripts too, however we didn’t see our usual Doctor, Dr. B. – she was still on leave – we saw a different Doctor. She was very nice, and (having done her homework, so to speak) she’d noticed that nearly all of my prescriptions would be coming up for renewal soon, so she gave me the lot, in one foul swoop. Unfortunately she made the mistake of putting all the prescriptions on the one form (which I think I may have mentioned in my blog at the time) I thought that a Chemist should be able to cope with something like that, but, naturally, they couldn’t. Now, I’m a particularly fussy and finicky patient, I keep all of our prescriptions filed, alphabetically, in a card index system, so that when we need to get something, the prescriptions we want are right at my fingertips, quickly and easily found. When half a dozen different prescriptions are all bunged into the one (stupid flimsy little) Chemist’s folder (I’m thinking of making my own, actually!) it’s hard (for me) to remember which prescription is where. It’s not really a big deal, but it annoys the you-know-what out of me! So this morning, after having my blood pressure taken (which, I might add, was very good!) I presented Dr. B. with the single Chemist’s folder with the great wad of prescriptions stapled inside it, and asked her, very nicely, if she could re-do them all for me – on single forms, please.  She was kind enough to do so, so now I’m all happy again, and I can file my prescriptions in their proper places 🙂 Isn’t it sad how the older we get, the more strictly we want (or should that be “need“?) to stick to our little routines and rituals! (Ha! Just wait until I’m 90! No-one will be able to lift a finger in the wrong order! No-siree! Everything “by the book“, in my book! 😉 ) Then we went on to the furniture shop next to Howards Storage Shed and ordered the furniture, then into Howards to get another one of those sliding basket drawer thingies that has worked out so well, and then home. And as I said earlier, it didn’t really feel all that hot – it was a bit humid, though.

Back home again, and back to Rifting. I finally managed to get all the stuff that the new and improved Hialeah had “inherited” from her predecessor on the Auction House (let’s just hope it sells, this time around!) and I even took Persha for a spin and got her up another couple of levels. Then it was almost time for “walkies”, so I went and read until then. This evening we watched the new show that started tonight on ABC1, called “Grantchester” – a sort of a “Father Brown” look-alike (well, not really – Father Brown was a Roman Catholic priest – this guy, Sidney Chambers, is a Vicar – but they both ride bikes everywhere, so it’s similar in that respect…) The show looks promising – so we’ll probably watch it again next Saturday.

Weigh-in this morning. I was what the scales teased me with yesterday – 101.8kg Good! But I start those wretched pills tomorrow. Bad! Oh well, maybe I will have to add, either another floor to my Stair Walks, or, do a third Stair Walk every day, before or after lunch. I think I’d rather add another floor – making 48 stairs down, and 48 stairs up – a total of 96 stairs… (Winter visualizes plodding up an extra set of stairs…) On second thoughts, an extra Stair Walk before lunch sounds good… We’ll see… depends on how much fluid my body decides to hoard…

Anyway, tune in again tomorrow night – tomorrow is our “Traipsing in Telara” day, so there’ll be all the news from that, plus it’s about time for me to change over my nail polish again – I think I’ll use the gold one (with the silver shimmer!) next – see how that one looks. I quite like this dark blue one – it does grow on you after a day or so – but I still get a startle when I look down and see such a very dark colour (almost black, actually…) on my nails! After that it’ll be the ripe raspberry, and then I think I’ll circle back to the Inglot “breathable” red – the one that matched my hair so nicely 😉 I’m not sure that we’ll get the second cupboard sliding basket installed tomorrow because we’ll be too busy in Telara – Monday is hair day, and my favourite eldest daughter is coming over as well – her last visit before she goes back to uni – I think! So the sliding basketie thing will probably have to wait until Tuesday (but I’ve got a feeling we had something planned for Tuesday – I  can’t remember…) Anyway, there’ll be plenty of news and gossip waiting for you this time tomorrow night, so until then, bee good, don’t do anything silly… and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

As I suspected, another day filled with “busy”! 🙂 I Rifted this morning, for once, and what was I doing? Re-writing a new/old character… I may have mentioned that my class of choice these days is the Mage – almost all of my girls are Mages, with a teeny smattering of Hunter/Marksman Rogues here and there. Well, I’ve been mostly working on getting (the shard) Hailol set up as my new main sphere of operations – leveling each character in turn up to level 20, and so on… (and much to the surprise of everyone who knows me, two of them are male – and I intend to keep them!) There was only one little thing that unsettled me – my Auctionator and Guild Bank Overflow Mistress was a (*gasp! *shock! *horror!) Hunter/Marksman Rogue. She was level 8, and I knew that there was no way I’d ever get her past that (because I simply didn’t want to put the time in on a character that was never really going to go anywhere) So, I created another character, a Mage, on another shard, and gave her the same name as the Hunter/Marksman on Hailol, and got her up to level 15. I then did the rounds, collecting anything that would be of any use on Hailol, and loaded her up with big (read: expensive!) bags – because at level 15 I could only take 45 platinum with me. Then I went back to Hailol, collected everything that Hialeah had both in her bank and on her, sold off anything I couldn’t transfer to the new character, and shunted the rest off to a third character to “hold” for the new, incoming Hialeah. Then, with a quiet tear, I deleted her, and her full set of Transcendent Trove of Boosts (believe me, that really hurt! 😦 ) Then I transferred the new and improved  Hialeah to Hailol, and gave her all of her predecessor’s old belongings and goods (except for the Transcendent Trove of Boosts, unfortunately – all I can do is hope that in about a year’s time, Trion will decide to give us Patrons another present of a Transcendent Trove of Boosts in our mail boxes!) It took quite a while to sort everything out, set up a new Guild Bank Overflow account, and put the rest of the things I’d brought with me either into the new account, or on the Auction House, but by lunchtime it was finally all done!

After lunch I bathroomed. That is, I emptied out the cupboard under one of my sinks, sorted the mill from the floss, tossed out the junk, left the rest on the bathroom bench for later deployment, stepped back, and let Julian go to work. Yesterday while we were at Howards Storage, I got one of those tray basket-thingies that slide out on rails so that you can see and access what’s at the back. The bottom of the sliding rails screws onto  the top of the shelf, and it’s a really marvelous invention – we must get another one for the other cupboard… Anyway, that didn’t take very long, and I was soon back at work putting everything away again. I had a lot less of everything looking a lot neater and tidier than it ever had, in about half an hour. Or so. Maybe three quarters of an hour… Then I emptied out my “makeup” drawer, and sifted through that – most of it went, and what I kept I’ll probably only use once in a blue moon, if that! But for some quirky reason, I like it, so I kept it. I don’t wear makeup much any more – I find it tends to get caked in the creases – but I still wear eye shadow – and although very rarely, I’ve even been known to wear lipstick every now and then. A far cry from the good old days when I was a master makeup artist – thanks largely to the fact that my favourite cousin was top fashion photographer, Bruno Benini, and me spending a lot of time in his studio, watching, and talking to the models. Once I had all that done, I called on my in-house Master Technician (AKA Julian) to put some drawer dividers in for me – not as easy as it sounds! They too were from Howards, and were “spring loaded” – actually, they work very well, but they’re damn hard to move once they’ve been put in place! So then it was back to re-organising – what did I want to put where? Did I want the eyeshadow at the front, or the face wipes? Where could I put the eyeshadow brushes? they really needed to stand up… hmm… find an empty perfume box, cut the flaps off the top, and viola, as the French say, a stand up eyeshadow brush box! Tick-tock, tick-tock – that drawer took me longer than the cupboard did! By the time I’d finished the drawer, I had an hour and a half before my afternoon Stair Walk, so I went into the lounge room, put my feet up, and read until it was time for “walkies”. Oh, we measured (alright, he measured, I watched!) the television wall to see if the entertainment unit we saw yesterday would fit. It will! YAYY! Now all I have to do is badger him into getting it  talk him into it  yell at him until he gives in (*tsk!* what are the words I’m groping for?!) see if he thinks it would look really great there, too! 😉 The side tables would also look good in the lounge room, and we could use the old ones in the spare room at each end of the sofa bed! (crosses fingers and tries to look innocent…)

Weigh-in this morning. Once more, my scales showed just how horrid and mean they really are – this time, Julian was watching, and he saw how they deliberately teased me and thumbed their nose at me! I got on the scales… they went down to 101.9kg. Paused. Wavered briefly down to 101.8kg, then bounced back to…. 102.0kg! One point less than yesterday! Now, was that mean, or was that mean?! I thought it was mean! Julian thought it was mean, too! We’re onto you, scales! Do that again, and we’ll both get on you at the same time! So it seems I’m getting the “go slow” treatment – and the day after tomorrow I start those wretched pills again! I’m not happy! 😦

Still, drop by again tomorrow night and find out all the latest! We have to go out in the morning, we both need to get new scripts, and if possible, on the way home, I’d like to drop by Howards and get another one of those sliding-drawer thingies, for the other cupboard in the bathroom. My little fountain in the bedroom has died (it’s lasted over 12 years!) and I’d like to see if I can replace it – trouble is, I’m not sure who sells them any more – I think “Bunnies” has them, somewhere near their garden section, from memory, and I know I’ve seen them at some candle shops (but which ones? That is the question!)… So there’ll be plenty more news for you tomorrow night, never fear! 😉 In the meantime, bee good, don’t do anything naughty, and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

Another day full of “busy” 🙂 I didn’t get a chance to do more than check my Auctions (all expired! 😦 ) collect the offerings from my Minions, and try out a new name on (yet another) new character on Rift. Oh, don’t worry, she won’t be permanent – I just wanted to see if I could get the name – which I did, surprisingly! I was looking at Bored Panda this morning (a most dangerous pastime! perhaps “wastetime” would be more appropriate? 😉 ) and there was a set of photographs under “Trending” (in the right hand column) called “Fairy Tales Come To Life In Charming Photographs By Ukrainian Photographer” – beautiful “fantasy” type photos, but I was rather struck by the name of one of them – “Alyonushka” – I’d never heard that name before, so I Googled it. It turns out that it’s an old Russian folk tale, but I thought the name was quite pretty, and the rest, as they say, was a forgone conclusion. I’ll keep the character – and thus the name – until I want to use it. Then the name holder character will cease to exist, and one of my other girls will be renamed with the now unclaimed name 🙂 They are beautiful photographs though, and there’s heaps of worthwhile and fascinating things to see on Bored Panda… if you have a spare lifetime to go and look 🙂

I barely had time to look at the photos, Google the meaning and find the story, create the character, and log out, before we were – finally! – off, and out of the apartment! First we went to Howards Storage World, to look for drawer and shelf organisers – honestly, there are few shops that it’s very dangerous to leave me to “browse” in – one is handbag shops (where some strange women adore shoes, I adore handbags – one can never have too many handbags! 😉 ) another is Chemist shops (so many Perfumes! Creams! Lotions! Make-up!) and places like Howards Storage World (all those fascinating and intriguing boxes, big or small! bags! bottles! racks!) I think I must have been a pack-rat in an earlier life – I love to “collect” bits and pieces that I’ll probably never use, don’t really want, and certainly have no room for… But anyway, after getting several items there (which will be utilized tomorrow, or so I’m told)  we went off to The Pines shopping centre. My slacks (of which I was so proud because I’d lost enough weight to be able to fit into a size 24!) were getting so big that they were on the point of falling off me – so I got another two pairs… down, not one size, but two! I’m fitting, very comfortably, into size 20 slacks! I don’t think I’ve done that for, umm…  about 45 years? At least! Probably longer… So after (mentally only) dancing around in delight for a few minutes, we then went off to Doncaster Shoppingtown. Himself wanted to get a new small non stick frying pan with a lid – our old one had died (after 20 years of faithful service!) so we shopped around for one – we ended up getting one from DJ’s – expensive, but hopefully it too will last for 20 years… I got some new face cream and some eye cream (see? Cosmetics of any kind are like catnip for me! My eyes go all glassy and I just…can’t help myself. I buy it! 😉 ) Then we went and had lunch (I’d taken one of my bars with me again) and met up with a friend of Julian’s while we had coffee. We had a really big (supermarket-type) shop to do, and then, finally, we came home… around 4 o’clock-ish. There wasn’t really time to do anything much – by the time we’d got everything inside and had a much needed cup of coffee – I only had 3/4 of an hour before my afternoon Stair Walk! So I played Solitaire for a bit, then thought “damn it, I’ll go for my walk now!”, so I did.

Weigh-in this morning. I did go down again (I’m starting to get really nervous now!) – almost half a kilo, to 102.1kg This was good – however I only have another three sleeps before I have to start taking those rotten fluid retention pills again, so I hope my body decides to make the most of the time until then! I know that there’s no way I can get down to double figures before my Birthday, but I’d like to get as close as possible to the 99kg mark – like, say, 100.8kg or something! We’ll see… It all really depends on how much fluid my body decides to store this time around.

So look in again tomorrow night – I have absolutely no idea what’s happening tomorrow (except maybe for putting in the bathroom drawer and shelf organisers?) Oh, and I forgot! Before we went into Howards Storage, we went into the furniture shop next to it – and they had a really nice sofa bed, and a rather nice entertainment unit and matching side tables – tomorrow we’ll have to measure the space available in the lounge room – if it’ll fit, I think we ought to get it – our current side tables can go into the spare room, and the lounge room can have the new entertainment unit, with matching side tables, so everything will look “proper”. It’s certainly the best entertainment unit we’ve seen – and I mean, you can go on looking forever, and there’ll always be another “best one we’ve seen” – but how many “best one we’ve seen” do we have to look at before we chose something? (And then stop looking immediately, or as sure as you have to break eggs to make an omelette, you’ll see another “best one we’ve seen”!) However, the sofa bed is exactly what we’re (I’m) looking for – it’s even the right colour, and they have them in stock! So roll on tomorrow! I’ll let you know what we decide tomorrow night! 🙂 I’ll also fill you in on how my Bathroom re-organisation goes – I expect to be tossing out quite a bit of … “stuff” (and then, of course, I’ll look at all the empty space, and think of all the new stuff I can get to re-fill it with! Ain’t it always the way? 😉 ) So it looks like being another busy day again tomorrow – and I’m starting to get antsy because I want to get back to Rifting – lately it seems as though every time I start playing, I have to stop after only an hour or so because the shards go down, or we’re going out, or something else has to be done, or whatever… Oh well, rest assured that there’ll be heaps of news waiting for you all tomorrow night, not least of which will be what my weight’s doing (which was really what this blog was supposed to be for – documenting my weight loss progress! Ah well, “the best laid plans”, etc… 😉 ) So until this time tomorrow night, bee good, have fun, and stay safe! 🙂

Finally, some progress on “The Adventures of Darth Carla” site was made today! I found a very expensive blog template (all of $18.00 worth!) and organised it. I also wrote Episode 1, though I do recommend reading the post before it, so that you’ll know what’s going on. It would also help if you’d been a member on my Bulletin Board, “The REAL CONNECTION” (later known as  “death… by chocolate!”) or been a participating reader of our “ver Ending Story…Never Ending Story… Never End…” So there it is… I suppose this means that I’d better commit myself to writing an episode at least once a fortnight – or even once a week – whichever comes first (in my priorities 😉 ) and I might even knock up the odd cartoon or so to go with it all. So now that TAoDC is up, and now that this blog seems to be going OK, I’m at a bit of a loss… No headers to make! No templates to look at and sigh over because they don’t work properly! What am I to do?! (thinks: I could always start a third blog…. No! NO! No more blogs! I have enough writing to do!) Anyone want a bespoke desktop Wallpaper?? Free?! ….thought not…

We got our lift back again this afternoon – too late to go shopping, unfortunately. I was on my way to my afternoon Stair Walk and we stopped and pressed the lift button, just to see if anything would happen… There was a whirring sound! Lift-type klanks and klunks! The doors opened… and a disembodied female voice said “Going down!”, or “Lift going down”, or something like that. I was totally nonplussed! I wasn’t expecting that! It seems that we now have a talking lift! Will wonders ever cease?! Anyway, we left the lift to its own devices and I continued on to the fire escape stairs and my walk… I’m thinking that I’m going to have to extend it to at least another half level, if not a full one – I’m not having to work hard enough – or put enough effort – into just the two levels, and while I am breathing a little heavier by the time I come back through the fire escape door, my breathing’s back to normal by the time I get to our front door (that is, the length of the lobby – our door is in the same position as the fire escape door, but on the other side of the lift well, which is in the middle of the lobby) 🙂 You know last night I said that I’d probably dream of shop windows all decked out in handbags, clothes and nice jewelry? Well, I didn’t dream of shop windows, per se, but I did dream that I was shopping! I was in a store similar to a Big W, and I think I was wanting to get a dress (and I never wear dresses, my ankles are too deformed, so I usually hide them under slacks – besides, slacks are far more comfortable!) The salesgirl ended up selling me… wait for it! A pair of shorts! I’ve never liked shorts – even when I was young, and so skinny that the neighbours used to invite me in and feed me sweet biscuits, because they felt sorry for me (you could count all my ribs and vertebrae, and my legs were like matchsticks! *sigh* I wish I’d stayed like that… ) so… was it me saying that I’d probably dream of shopping (or rather, me writing about it) or my subconscious, yearning for the long denied freedom of the wide expanses of shop floor, crammed with lovely things that I might want to buy – that made me have that dream? Interesting question… I’ve always felt that the written word is far more powerful than something simply said aloud… So anyway, I ended up staying home again today, but, tomorrow! Ah! Tomorrow I shall fling wide these prison doors, and fly, free at last, into the bosom of the shopping centre! Which shopping centre doesn’t matter! If it has shops, I’ll be happy! (actually, I’m sorta laying it on a bit thick – like lime jelly, with a trowel – I do like shopping, yes, but I don’t live for it, and I wouldn’t want to spend more than a couple of hours at a time in a shopping centre – I just like exaggerating a bit, sometimes! 😉 ) At least now that the lift is back in action we’ll be able to get back on track to finish off the spare room – we need to get a sofa bed, a couple of end tables (or we could use the ones from the lounge room, and get new ones for there…) a nice floor rug… and I think that’s about it? Oh yes, and a couple of scatter cushions for the sofa bed – that’ll finish that room off nicely… We still need to get a longer entertainment unit for the big television – and if we use the lounge room end tables in the spare room, we could get end tables to match the entertainment unit for the lounge room… 😉 It looks like things are afoot in more places than the Mt. Buffalo plateau…

Weigh-in this morning. Oh, the dread! The fear and the anxiety, with which I mounted my scales this morning! But I didn’t go up, I went down! To 102.5kg – 2 whole points! The rebound, when it comes (which it will… soon!) is going to be painful! Oh well, I’ve been shedding fluid like crazy the past couple of days (I suppose my body has to get rid of it, to make room for all the fluid I’m going to be retaining after Sunday!) I just said to himself – “isn’t next Monday a holiday? Labour Day? Moomba?” Apparently not… they’re saving the Public Holiday, and the Moomba procession, for my Birthday! 🙂 How ’bout that! My Birthday is a Public Holiday! 😀

So drop back again tomorrow night – find out if I went shopping, and how much I bought 😉 or if we went out looking for sofa beds and entertainment units… (which reminds me – I need a new sponge, or loofah – one that won’t sandpaper my nail polish off like the one I have at the moment does! Priceline will have something…) So far, my new inky blue nail polish is holding out OK… but I think I’ll try the gold one next (I’ll save the yummy, luscious raspberry red one for lucky last! 😉 ) And, last but not least, I’ll let you know how my weight goes… as they say in the classics, “I have a bad feeling about that!” So until this time tomorrow night, bee extra good, don’t work too hard, and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂