Greetings all, this is just a very quick update – I’ve found, and implemented, an $18.00 (last of the big spenders, that’s me! 😉 ) blog template for “The Adventures of Darth Carla“. Episode 1. has finally been written, and is up, but I advise you to read the one before it, “What Has Gone Before…”, so you know what’s been happening. It’d probably be a good idea to read “About Darth Carla”, as well… it’ll give you some idea of just who, and what she is! 😉

Enjoy!

The regular blog will be written later this evening…

Goodness, what a day! Himself went off for his morning constitutional as usual this morning, and of course, stopped by the PO Box to see what goodies it contained… 🙂 It was my nail polishes!  YAYYYY! 🙂 I was over the moon! Last time they sent me an email saying that they’d been dispatched, a few days before they arrived – not this time though… or maybe they did, but I just never received it. My mail has been more than a bit “patchy” at best, lately, and it’s apparently impossible to find a mail service that doesn’t very heavily vet everyone’s incoming mail for spam and other nasties. Personally, I prefer to vet my own spam email, thank you very much – for some totally cynical reason, I simply don’t trust anyone else to do it for me – but it’s been snatched from my control for reasons that himself could best explain (an explanation in a comment would be appreciated, dear 🙂 ) because I can’t, and I’m livid about it! 😦 (I have been for some time, actually, but apparently they’re all doing it 😦 ) Anyway, mail grizzles aside, I’ve spent nearly all day searching about for another blog host – mainly because I’m getting fed up with some of the bugs in WP – the way headers don’t display on some templates when they’re supposed to, for instance. The lack of a decent variety of fonts to use (I mean, c’mon! It’s really hard making do with about 20 available fonts, when you have 2000+ on your own computer to choose from!) I didn’t even Rift today, except after lunch, when himself and I had a one hour traipse through Moonshade Highlands – and – punching way above our weight, we managed to finish off the weirdly convoluted, backwards and forwards, Dwarven Artifact quest chain! Hopefully we might be able to get in another hour again tomorrow! Anyway, I looked at all the so-called “main” blog sites – Blogger, Blog.com, LiveJournal, Tumblr, Blogspot, and a few others – and quite frankly, they were terrible, compared to this – so here I’ll stay, for the nonce, and try to find something suitable for Darth Carla to reside in… I’m now exploring the $$$ templates… *sigh* So tomorrow, I’ll devote 1 hour only to finding a not too expensive template – after that, I’ll give up and Rift. If we don’t go out – because the lift will be back in action again tomorrow! (reprise: YAYYYY! 🙂 ) I shall probably dream of shop windows all decked out in handbags, nail polishes, clothes, and lovely jewelry tonight… 🙂

Because my new nail polish (oh my ghod! Himself has found “Kenya“, and is happily playing it in the background – It’ll be his fault if I don’t finish this blog tonight because I’m too busy banging my head against a nice, soft wall! 😉 talk about memories! 🙂 ) Where was I? Oh yes, my new nail polishes… I didn’t know which one I should try first… The yummy red one? (just like a rich, thick, metallic red duco – only serve with a dollop of whipped cream!) The scintillating gold one with the silvery sparkle? or the dark and brooding stormy blue, with the cobalt shimmer? Ah, decisions, decisions… what about painting each nail in a different one? Well, maybe not… I know I’m adventurous, but…  er… 😉 I’m not going to tell you which colour I picked… yet. I’ll tell you tomorrow night. So after Rifting with himself, I sat down to do my nails… waited until they were dry, then went for my afternoon Stair Walk. I’ve decided that doing my Stair Walk after breakfast in the mornings when I have a full stomach probably isn’t a very good idea – I was really pushing to get up the last stretch of stairs this morning – but if I go right after my weigh-in, it means that himself doesn’t get a chance to have his (much longer and more energetic) walk before breakfast – and if he does it after breakfast, it eats up too much of his day. So we’re going to try something different. He’ll go for his walk after my weigh-in, as usual, but he’ll ring me when he’s about 10 minutes from home. I’ll dart off (I’m getting a little bit better at darting, now!) grab the book to prop the door open with, and start my Stair Walk. By the time I’m on my way back up the stairs again, he should be back home and will meet me on the stairs to let me into the house when I finish (of course, I could take my keys with me, but I don’t have a pocket to carry them in ) I think we’ll try that for a couple of days and see how that works out…

Weigh-in this morning. I’m now in abject fear and trepidation about tomorrow…I know I shall rebound, and go up, I just know it! 😦 I went down again today – only one point, to 102.7kg, but the law of averages say that for every ounce I lose I’ll have to rebound and go back up again (a little bit!) sooner or later… and I reckon that that “sooner or later” must be just about ready to fall on my fearfully anticipating head… Plus the fact that February is a short month, so it’s almost time for me to start taking those rotten fluid retaining pills again. I fear that my current downward spiral will be short lived… *sob*

So anyway, tune in again tomorrow night – you’re in for a veritable feast of news and tidbits from chez nous – what with blog templates I might, or might not have found for Darth Carla’s return, what colour nail polish I eventually decided to try out first, if I Rifted or went out shopping (and if we did, what did I get, if anything? I’m sure you’re all dying to know! 😉 We still have an IOU for a Valentine’s Day present for ourselves, too!) for the first time since February 9th, and of course, whether my weight went down… or stayed the same… or as I suspect it will, went up. And when you throw the random acts of Crool Forchin*  into the mixture, who knows what other newsworthy gems will be cast before you? But if you look in again this time tomorrow, all will be revealed 🙂 So until then, bee good, take care, and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

*with apologies to C. J. Dennis’s “The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke”, circa 1915

Well, after scrambling to get my Stair Walk in before my shower, get dressed, and have breakfast, all before 11 o’clock (but as usual, I managed it – with time to spare – I don’t know why I always panic that I won’t…) I had my hair done this morning – and also as usual, it looks great (and using those straightening tongs, or whatever they’re called, really does help it look better for longer – who’d a thunk it!) – then himself had his hair cut and I’m still finding bits of hair in my basin this evening! What does your hair do, Julian, float up the drainpipe or something? 😉 After that, I spent the rest of the morning fruitlessly looking for a decent (free) blog template, that would give me a good layout with a solid colour over all (that is, no silly white column where the text goes – I hate that!) plus display a custom header properly! (Not just tell you that you can use a custom header, and then not display anything!) for the Darth Carla story. I’ve got a temporary holding template in place, but I don’t like it… more searching is in order… Julian didn’t get to go over and check the PO Box today – it was too wet so I don’t know whether or not it was my nail polishes that arrived – probably not though, coz last time I got an email saying that my nail polish (I only ordered one last time) had been dispatched – this time I’ve had nothing so far *sigh* I wish they sold them down here in Victoria…

After lunch I got back into Rift for a bit, but I couldn’t concentrate, so gave up and halfheartedly looked at a few more templates, then went off to read. Later, looking at what passes for “news” these days, and listening to T. Abbott’s plans for new anti terrorism/security laws and such, I couldn’t help agreeing with a part of it, and objecting to the rest. The idea of revoking the Australian Citizenship of anyone who goes overseas to fight for any of the terrorist groups should have been enacted as far back as 2001, in my opinion. If they want to go over there and train and fight with them, for whatever reason, that’s their business, and they should be free to go and do so – on the understanding that they will no longer be considered Australian citizens, and no longer be able to come back to what used to be their home. No exceptions. But apart from that – they should be encouraging more free speech, not curtailing it, and they should pass a law that no person should be too easily offended! Honestly, some of the things I read in the media, and some of the shouts of “racist!” that spring to so many lips, regardless of the circumstances or context, sometimes I think “these people” (you know, the ubiquitous “They“) do nothing all day except go through every newspaper, news report, magazine, gossip column – anything they can get their hands on – looking, specifically, for something… anything… that could possibly be called offensive, racist, mocking of some holy person – just something that they can raise the roof about and decry and vilify the person or persons who said, wrote, or even implied it! For goodness sake – it’s only words! I was born in 1946, and grew up in the early 50’s. My father was Italian, and you can’t begin to imagine some of the things I was called at school (that didn’t upset me too much – those girls were just stupid and ignorant – what did upset me was being teased deliberately to provoke my short, hot (and I’m afraid, very loud!) temper!) As Dad used to say – the names they called me were just words, and if I allowed them to upset me, that was my fault, not theirs. They didn’t know any better, but I surely did. (I might just add that during the war, my father was a hand to hand combat trainer in the Australian Army) So, anyway – people these days are too quick to take offense – they never stop to wonder if the words are meant to be offensive, or if they’re being said in ignorance. Perhaps a good motto for them to adopt would be “Never ascribe to malice what can be put down to stupidity“

Oh dear! I’ve done it again, haven’t I! Another rant. I’m sorry – I’ll try not to do it again this month (this is the third one for February, I think!) honest, but occasionally I just get carried away… Sometimes people just seem so… stupid!

Weigh-in this morning. Well, you can all rejoice and open the bubbly – I did go down again (I’m sure to rebound tomorrow though!) to 102.8kg (so I’ve lost 32kg since August last year! I still have another 27kg to go though… *sigh*) I guess the Stair Walking is helping a bit, even if it is killing my knee…  But I’ll stick to my motto: “Whatever it takes!” 🙂

So tune in again tomorrow night folks – find out if it was my nail polishes in the PO Box, or just another bill… and if I’ve had to resort to a third Stair Walk because my weight did rebound back into the 103kg zone. Mind you, it might still be raining tomorrow morning, in which case himself won’t be able to go for his walk, or check the PO Box, so you might not find out what its contents were! Wouldn’t that be disappointing! 😉 I’ll keep on looking for blog templates, but I don’t hold out much hope – I reckon I’ve looked at just about every (free) template that WordPress has, fifty times over! When (and if!) I ever do find a suitable one, and really do start writing The Adventures, I’ll let you all know, so that you can go and pick it all to pieces and tell me what I got wrong, eh? 🙂 On the other hand, I might just Rift tomorrow… give myself a bit of a break from blogs and graphics… and of course, by the next day, Wednesday, the lift will be working again! I hope… it should be… I’m going to be very unhappy if it’s not. But that’s the day after tomorrow, and nothing to do with the news and gossip that I’ll be bringing you tomorrow night! So until tomorrow night, bee good, drive carefully in this wet weather, and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

I’m starting to get a little bit… annoyed… with WordPress! If you can’t add a header to a blog template which gives you every indication that you can add a header, then they shouldn’t give you the dimensions of the header to make – should they? I wanted to make a few changes to “The Adventures of Darth Carla” (my alternate blog) this afternoon, so I found a (free) template that I liked, chose all my colours, organised my Widgets, did all the hard slog – looked at the header instructions (1000 x 250 pixels) thought “Yeah, I can make one that size!”, and I did. I saved it. I uploaded it. I instructed the template that that was the header to use. But. No header! I spent about 15 minutes trying to get the ruddy thing to display – nope, no go! (this isn’t the first blog template that has done this to me here at WordPress, either!) I can add a manual header (that is, write it in myself in the template set-up thingy using their fonts and colours), and what it displays when I do that is small... less than a quarter the size of the “recommended” header size that they tell you to make! All I can assume is that they got the header size wrong! I might try making a really small one tomorrow, and see if it’ll display that one… on the other hand, I might just try looking for another template – one that actually works! *grrrr!*

Anyway, as today was Sunday, himself and I traipsed off into Telara for another fun day of questing for fun and profit. It was a most successful day all round! We did finish off in Scarwood Reach this afternoon, having completed all the quests, won a special Achievement for earning three Hunting Tokens (for bringing back three “trophies” from certain Named Creatures* in Scarwood Reach), polishing off the final Rift and Rift Boss (the one I usually have to ask for help with – it’s almost impossible to finish solo!) and!!! Going up four levels! Amazing!! 🙂 When we finished Scarwood Reach we had the option of going off to Droughtlands or Moonshade Highlands. We opted for Moonshade Highlands and started off on the long, extremely convoluted and complicated, quest chain that starts off when you go and look at a strange Dwarven artifact – which magically transports you from your home city (Meridian, in our case) to Moonshade Highlands. Naughty Trion! They’ve gone and added an extra Porticulum to the mixture and not told anyone about it! (well, they didn’t tell me!) It caused a bit of confusion at one stage, as it was simply added to our list of known Porticulums – I thought it was the Porticulum almost directly below us being added (you used to have to go and talk to a Porticulum Master to open it and add it to your list, but that’s now changed – you only have to get within a certain distance from them and they get added automagically to your list) It would have been a lot easier if we’d known it was there… Oh well, my next girls through there will know and be able to take advantage of it… Better late than never, as they say in the classics… We’ve finished as much of that particular quest chain as we can for the moment, so next time we play we’ll go back to the Defiant end of Moonshade Highlands and just do “ordinary” quests until we level up enough to handle the rest of those weird Dwarven ones. Julian commented several times about how easily we were dealing with the mobs in Scarwood Reach – and so far in Moonshade Highlands, too! It makes me slightly uneasy – I’m getting the niggling feeling that something’s changed. Either we’ve been souped up, or the mobs have been made weaker – it never used to be this easy to level up, and I don’t think I like it all that much. There’s not much challenge any more! I used to dread it when himself insisted on going for yellow or orange quests (Green quests = fairly easy – mobs around your own level. Yellow quests = slightly harder quests – mobs up to 3 or 4 levels higher than you are.  Orange quests = pretty damn hard (or they used to be!) – mobs more than 4 levels higher than you.  Red quests = forget it Freddy! mobs up to 10 levels higher than you. Except in cases of Divine Intervention, you will die!) Now, green quests are hardly worth doing, they’re so easy. Yellow quests seem “just about right”, and Orange quests are very do-able and not to be shunned. So what’s changed? Where have the challenging quests gone? Have I, all of a sudden, become a Master Gamer? able to leap Orange quests in a single bound, and wave gaily at the Red quests as I sail overhead? I don’t think so… or is it that in order to attract more and younger players, Trion, in their wisdom, have dumbed Rift down to the point of “is it really worth playing?” And that would be a big shame…

Weigh-in this morning. I really didn’t think I would have lost anything this morning, so I mutely climbed onto the scales, fearing the worst. I went down to 103.0kg! Five points! I was stunned (and very happy!) I won’t make it to double figures by my Birthday, but I’ll be reasonably close (I hope!) I don’t expect this pleasant downward slide to last too much longer, but I might as well enjoy it while it does! 🙂

So tune in again tomorrow night – so you can commiserate when my weight goes back up again tomorrow morning (which it might! This is me we’re talking about, remember! 😉 ) or open the champagne if it goes down 🙂 Tomorrow is “Hair Day” and I’m looking forward to looking human again 🙂 Tuesday will see me getting geared up for…  Wednesday… Oh, Wednesday! Bliss! The lift should be back in action!  Which has given me a thought… When we’re going out, why don’t I… walk down to the ground floor, take the lift down one floor to the Garage (I’m not sure if the fire escape stairs actually go down to the Garage? Julian?) we go off and do our shopping or whatever, and on the way back, I get out on the third or fourth floor, and walk up from there! (as well as doing my normal, daily Stair Walks, not instead of them!) I’ll think about it, anyway – my knee is giving me hell on the going down bits. Hopefully I’ll hear something (please,please,please) about my nail polish tomorrow (I’m getting a trifle anxious about them – can you tell? 😉 ) I’ll let you know how my experiments with the template(s) for “The Adventures of Darth Carla” go – and I really must find the time to start writing it properly, and not just thinking about writing it! So until tomorrow night, bee good, don’t melt in this heat, and above all, stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

*Named Creatures – special Elite monsters which have yellow nameplates (that is, they won’t attack you without provocation) and a little “diamond” icon next to their names.  When you kill them, they drop a “trophy” object which you can exchange for a token. When you collect three tokens you get a special Achievement and bonus experience points.

Well… another day… More Stair Walking, more Rifting, and more Stair Walking again. I actually spent most of this morning collecting yet another lot of “mounts” that I couldn’t resist buying, in Rift. I wish they existed in real life – they look like great fun (and a great way to very quickly end up dead, or a paraplegic!) They’re sort of like a cross between a boogie board and a skate board. They’re quite large, round-ish, and they don’t have wheels. They skim through the air a couple of feet from the ground, and you stand on them and balance, much like you would on a surf board. As I said – I couldn’t resist getting one – and of course, because I bought one, all of my characters, on all shards, got one in their mail box, which I then had to run around and collect. Two shards have ten characters each… Two shards have eleven characters each, and my main two shards have twelve characters each. I had to visit sixty six mail boxes! It took a while… Then I had to tidy up the mess I left last night while I was trying to find out where a friend’s character was, and why they’d got stuck. Finally I was able to get back to Persha and her slow climb to level 20. (She’s now level 15…) I decided to grab the “Close a Rift to gain a Planar Charge” quest and swim her over to Freemarch (see previous post) she didn’t have a “water breathing” necklace. Hmmm… Who had it? It turned out that Jadenfyre had it, so I had to get him to post it to her – I could have swum her over without it, but there’s lake in Freemarch which very often has Artifacts in it, so whoever’s questing and running around in Freemarch does quite a lot of deep-lake diving, and it’s ever so much more easier if you don’t have to come up for air all the time! 🙂 Anyway, she got her necklace, jumped on her “shark with feet” (it’s the only mount that swims natively, and its swimming is a lot faster than my swimming!) (See?! There I go again – trying to do things the quickest, easiest, and most efficient way! I know – it spoils all the fun an’ all that, but I just can’t seem to help it!) and went over to Freemarch. Once there I hung around the starting area and closed three Rifts, then I headed off, picking, mining, and skinning my way along the well trodden Artifact Run. I leveled up my Skills, found about 40 or so Artifacts (which wouldn’t even have been remotely possible in Silverwood!), and got my “Merchant of Death” title, and then I went back to Silverwood to continue with the quest chains there. The only person who won’t be leveling up past level 8 – and therefore won’t need to go over to Freemarch – is little Hialeah, the Auctionator and mistress of the Guild Bank Overflow accounts. She’s a Hunter/Marksman “Rogue” (in World of Warcraft she’d be called a Beast Master Hunter) and while they used to be my preferred Class to play, I really don’t want to play them any more – they’re just too slow, and even more fragile, and harder to level up, than Mages! So, anyway I didn’t spend any time on my graphics today – I was too busy collecting mounts and “untangling” a few characters in Rift.

I did spend a bit of time looking in Howard’s Storage World for the sort of sliding baskets I want for the top shelf in my bathroom cupboards, and I think I’ve found what I want, but I’ll need to see them before we decide to put them in. Roll on next Wednesday, when the lift should (cross fingers, touch wood!) be back in action! I’m starting to get really frustrated, being cooped up in here… And I haven’t heard a word from Willow Byron Bay about my nail polishes, or if they’ve even been dispatched yet! *sniffle* *sigh*

I won’t really be able to get back to my graphics until Monday afternoon, or Tuesday – tomorrow’s Sunday, and of course we’ll be running all over Scarwood Ridge killing spiders and other nasty things… Actually, we might even finish Scarwood Reach tomorrow, and I’ve just been trying to think where we go off to after that… Hmmm… it looks like we’ll have a choice of Moonshade Highlands ( levels 36 – 40), Droughtlands (levels 36 – 44), or Iron Pine Peaks (levels 41 – 47) I vote for Moonshade Highlands! I always get turned around and go the wrong way in Droughtlands, and I hate Iron Pine Peaks, it’s always snowing, which makes visibility hopeless! Of course, with Moonshade Highlands we also get the terribly long and convoluted quest chain starting with the “Dwarven Artifact” that lies just outside Meridian and Sanctum – but it does give us both Moonshade Highlands and Droughtlands to play in 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. The more things change, the more they stay the same – weight-wise, anyway. Yes, 103.5kg again today. Not fair. Maybe I will have to do a third Stair Walk, after all… I really, really don’t want to, but if it’ll make a difference, I’ll do it…

I think I’ve decided that I don’t like sitting on this side of the room (not that the other side would be any different, really) You see, I have my back to Julian’s desk and that side of the room. We have tiled floors, so there are no floor boards to squeak or creak, and we always go bare footed in the house, so there’s not even the sound of shoes on the tiles. It’s very quiet, movement-wise in here. If I could have just one dollar, for every time I’ve started to say something to himself, only to find myself talking to thin air – because he’s got up to go elsewhere, but hasn’t said “I’m just going to…” to me, or anything, and I haven’t heard, or seen him go – I’d be an extremely rich woman! I think I’ll get a cow bell and hang it around his neck, or make him wear wooden clogs on his feet! It’s more than very annoying, it’s… it’s… well, I dunno, but it makes me mad!

So anyway, drop by again tomorrow night to find out all the news – did we finish Scarwood Reach? Was it Moonshade Highlands we went on to, or was it Droughtlands or Iron Pine Peak? (I’ll tell you, if I kin ‘ave me d’ruthers, it won’t be Iron Pine Peak!) I’m sure there’ll be lots more to tell you, like did my weight go up, down, or stay the same (again)? and if so, did I cave in and do a third Stair Walk? (unlikely, but you never know…) So until this time tomorrow night, bee good, don’t do anything silly, and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

There! That’s much more easier than trying to think of an appropriate title every night! 🙂 Just so that you know, it’s figured out by the year (2015) plus the month, February (02), and (according to Wikipedia: Stardate) “The digit following the decimal point is generally regarded as a day counter.”, therefore, as today is the 20th, I ended up with 201502.20. Get used to it – you’ll be seeing it every night from now on! 😉

Well, I had quite a busy Rifting day today – I was wrong! I thought I had young Rubyfox up to level 18 yesterday, but she wasn’t… she was only level 16! On the other hand, I was right – I did get her up to level 20 this morning! 🙂 I try to alternate leveling Defiants and Guardians so as to give myself a bit of a change in quest chains – Rubyfox was Defiant, and has been questing in Freemarch. The girl I’m leveling now, Persha (pronounced “Persia”) is a Guardian, and is questing in Silverwood. Although I know all the quests backwards, forwards, and inside out, it’s still a nice change to be able to switch between the two areas 🙂 I think Persha is currently sitting on level 12, so it’ll be a day or so before I get her to level 20 – and in the meantime I have another girl, Copperfire (she who’s name must be changed, like last week! I don’t like the spelling. Unfortunately I hit “Enter” before I had a chance to re-think, and I actually got the name (I wasn’t expecting to, you see) I could always re-roll her, I suppose… it’d certainly be cheaper than renaming her!) who was acting as an “experimental guide” for a friend who came over this evening. He’d been stuck between quests and wasn’t sure how to proceed, so I used her to find out exactly where he’d got stuck. All sorted out now! 🙂 (I hope! 😉 ) So now she’s at level 12, and although she’s a Guardian, she still has unfinished business over in Freemarch, so I might work with her tomorrow, to get those loose ends tied up, and then go back to Persha. It’s very strange – the Defiants over in Freemarch have very regular (almost “Old Faithful” like!) Rifts opening up in the starting area. Both factions have quests which require them to (a) collect planarite by closing Rifts, and (b) close a Rift to gain a Planar Charge. This is easy-peasy in Freemarch, where “baby” Rifts open up approximately every three or four minutes in the starting area, but next to totally impossible in Silverwood where you can consider yourself really, really lucky if a Rift opens up somewhere vaguely close to the starting area… occasionally… every hour – hour and a half or so. I think a lot of people are finally waking up to the fact that they can do what I now do as a matter of course – swim from Divine Landing in Silverwood, over to Ark of the Ascended in Freemarch, and use their almost constantly opening Rifts instead! (I’ve noticed an increasing number of Guardians over there lately, and I reckon that that’s why!) Artifacts are also much easier to find  in Freemarch – there is a definite “Artifact run” around the area between the starting area, Ark of the Ascended, and Meridian (the Defiant’s capital city) where Artifacts can be found on an extremely regular basis – there is no equivalent over in Silverwood, where the absence, or you could even say complete and total lack of Artifacts is boringly regular. Usually, the first things I do when I get to Divine Landing are the following: (1) Get the Porticulum (this happens automatically now) (2) Get my training in Foraging, Butchering, and Mining, (3) Swim over to Freemarch, close three Rifts, then mine around the Ark of the Ascended area, pick up herbage and wood, kill wolves for their pelts, all whilst looking for Artifacts on a quick “Artifact run” on the way to Denegar’s Stand where there’s a Porticulum you can get if you’re careful (remember, you’re behind Enemy Lines! 🙂 ) so that you can return easily any time you want to look for more Artifacts, or get your Skills up (there’s also a lot more mining nodes, animals to skin, and herbage to pick, over in Freemarch!) As to why these discrepancies exist between Silverwood and Freemarch, I have no idea – but the Defiants definitely seem to get the “gravy” while the Guardians get the leftover “beans” 😦

I also worked on some more blog icons again today – I wanted to do something with an Owl, but I don’t think I’ve found the right font, or rather dingbat, yet because they looked a bit… er… weird? Not quite owl-like? I wonder if I could use a brush instead? I might try that tomorrow… in the meantime though, I made more Zodiac signs (in a different style) which look quite good. I’ll see what tomorrow brings… 🙂

Weigh-in this morning. I weighed in at 103.5kg today – Not too bad, I suppose, but it’s still (as I keep complaining!) too slow! I haven’t extended myself to my suggested/threatened three Stair Walks a day yet – but I will if I have to, in order to speed this process up a bit! I am getting better at this Stair Walking business, and I think I’m puffing less each time I go – but it’s really killing my left knee! It’s a matter of  “one… ouch! two… owww! three… ooo! me knee!” – yes, I count the steps aloud. I don’t know why, I just do, OK?

So that’s about it for today – it was good having Josh over tonight – I just hope he remembers what I told him about where everything was in Rift, and to call me if he gets lost again 🙂 He’ll learn – it took me three years of watching my favourite eldest daughter, and then Julian, playing World of Warcraft, before I decided, very timidly, to see if I could play too… I thought I’d be terrible – and I was, at first, totally hopeless – but it’s amazing what you pick up just by watching… It didn’t take me long to get the hang of it.

So tune in again tomorrow night – I haven’t heard anything from Willow Byron Bay about my nail polishes – I hope they arrive soon! Maybe I’ll get an email tomorrow saying that they’ve been dispatched… Oh, and there’s good news about the lift! Apparently everything is on track for lift usability on the due date, the 25th – next Wednesday. Hooray! I’ll be able to go shopping again! Get some slacks that don’t gape like the mouth of a Whale Shark around my waist! 🙂 But in the meantime, I shall do what I do best… Muddle along, as usual. That’s about all the news for tonight, but there’ll be more for you all this time tomorrow night – both dramatic and mundane occurrences for me to either sob, laugh, sneer or complain about (as usual, eh? 😉 ) But until then, bee good, behave yourselves, and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

A blog title at all? Why can’t we just have something like (with apologies to the late Gene Roddenberry) “Winter’s log, earthdate 2015.19.02”? It’d be much easier… in fact, I just might adopt something like that for future posts… D’you know, I’ve just wasted about ten minutes, futilely skimming through that excuse for a newspaper, The Age, for some sort of topic to grab hold of and use, but there wasn’t anything suitable, and I couldn’t think of anything else. Yes, I think I might just use a Star Trek type log entry format from now on… As usual, I Rifted most of this morning – took young Rubyfox up to level 18, re–Auctioned all the stuff that was passed in (“Auction Expired” – that is, just about everything! 😦 ) and sorted through all the odds and sods that my Minions straggled in with this morning. I should be able to get Rubyfox up to level 20 tomorrow morning, and then it’ll be on to another Guardian… When I get them all up to level 20, I plan on a longer run for them all – up to level 40. Himself and I had another session in Scarwood Reach until lunch time (he had to act as Taxi driver for my favourite eldest daughter who had a doctor’s appointment this afternoon) and I got on with some more “optional icons” to use as an alternative to the “Winter” character I have in the current header. I made Zodiac signs this time. I’m not sure when I’ll use any of them – or even if I’ll use them at all! I’m not even really sure why I made them – but I want to do something with graphics, and I can’t make big, fancy blog headers for this template, so little “postage stamp” icons are sort-of keeping me busy for the moment. Does anyone have any requests? Commissions? Ideas they’d like turned into a desktop wallpaper? Maybe I should hang up a sign: “Bored Artiste available for hire, Cheap!” and underneath, “(hire at own risk!)” – or something like that 🙂 As I said, I created the 12 signs of the Zodiac this afternoon. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but it took a fair while – it wasn’t hard, just rather fiddly, fitting them into a postage stamp sized graphic and still getting the drop shadows to look “normal”, and not as though they’d been chopped off with a sharp knife. Maybe I’ll try doing birds next – I have an idea I’d like to try out for an Owl, if I can find a decent bird dingbat, and get Julian to “vet” the font site for me.

I got the results of my blood test last night – Dorevitch have changed my Warfarin dose, but not by much. I’m still taking the same dose from Monday to Friday, but they’ve upped it on weekends, as it seems my blood “thickness” was getting a bit high. *sigh* more rat poison… Oh well, if it keeps me out of hospital with more blood clots in both my lungs, I’ll be happy to take as much as they want me to!

I’ll let you into a little secret – I have another project in the works, but I keep shoving it into the “too hard” basket, and when I tell you what it is, you’ll understand why I keep shoving it aside – because I really don’t know quite how to do it. I get daily emails from both Amazon and Goodreads. I usually read mainly Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and Historical fiction – in Kindle format – and these emails they send me let me know when new books in those genres come out, or if any of the authors I read has a new book coming out. I do put a lot of them on my “Read Next” Wishlist (on Amazon), but there are so many of them that I can’t put them all on my “Read Next” list (besides, I think they have a limit as to how many Terabytes you’re allowed to use in your Wishlist) – So I want to make a list, in no particular order, of all those books, in all those emails, with the appropriate url’s so that I can find and buy them easily, that I can print out and keep handy! I want to be able to edit it so as not to get duplicates, I need the author’s name, I need the title of the book, the seller (Amazon or Goodreads), and I need the where to buy url. And every time I start to compile a list, I get about three done, and I fling up my hands in despair – it’s just too hard and time consuming, copying and pasting from an email to a Word document. They usually have to be scraped (copied) and pasted into Notepad (or similar) to get rid of the formatting they use in the email, and then scraped and pasted into Word! Please, I beg you, with tears in my voice! Is there an easier way?!

Weigh-in this morning. Not bad… went down another one point, to 103.7kg.  It’s still too slow… what if I did a third Stair Walk after lunch? One after breakfast (it really should be before breakfast, but if I do it before breakfast, either Julian doesn’t get the time to have his walk before breakfast, or we have a horribly late breakfast at around 9.30am, so I’ve opted to have my Stair Walk after breakfast… frankly, I can’t see why we can’t do our walks at the same time! I’m perfectly capable of wedging the door open and walking down two levels, and back up again, and letting myself into the house again afterwards!) So… one after breakfast, one after lunch, and one about 5.30pm, before dinner… Maybe that would help speed things up a bit? I’m puffing a little less each time I do my walk, too…

So tune in again tomorrow night for all the latest hot goss! I didn’t put an extra coat of nail polish on this afternoon – I decided that I quite liked the way it looked with only one coat – it looks almost as though I’d dipped my nails in silvery star shine… I do hope the lift gets finished quickly – I was going to wait until I hit double figures, but I don’t think I can wait that long to get some smaller slacks – these are getting to the ridiculous stage – they’re now so baggy around the waist that they’re making my tops bulge out over the excess material, and I really look weird with a lumpy, slightly undulating midriff! I haven’t heard anything from Willow Byron Bay about the nail polishes that I ordered the other day, apart from their acknowledgement of my payment – hopefully I’ll hear that they’re on their way by this time tomorrow! 🙂 But that’s all the news there is tonight – no doubt there’ll be loads more tomorrow night that you won’t want to miss out on! 🙂 So until this time tomorrow night, bee good, take care, and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

The blog template today! 😉 What I did do today was work on some “alternate” symbols for the header (it’s only 200×150 px so there’s not that much work involved!) I made a cat one, and a Lily of Florence, and a few other ones – I’m doing them in different colours and styles, just to add a bit of “variety” (it’s really a very plain blog template!) It’s also very simple to change the background colours, too – but I won’t try that just yet, I’ll let you get all settled and comfortable with this one, then I’ll spring it on you! 🙂 Rift-wise: I got Asima (a Guardian) to level 20 and got her back to Sanctum where she mailed off her water-breathing necklace to Rubyfox (a Defiant) who’s next to be leveled up. As far as Auctioning things off to make money for the Hailol Guild Bank Endeavour, it seems people aren’t buying much (probably because their ruddy Minions are bringing in all the crafting materials they could possibly want, and then some! Wrecked the economy, those ruddy Minions have, wrecked it! *pout*) Azsherah, on Laethys, has sold off all the secondary full stacks of materials, but only managed to make 68 platinum so far; Hialeah on Hailol has managed to pull in about 20 platinum, all told. They should have made in the vicinity of 300 platinum between them – that’s how much difference the Minions have made… Don’t get me wrong! I like having Minions to do my farming for me! It saves me time and boredom – and anything that gets me out of farming for materials has my vote! 🙂 This afternoon himself and I had another quickish run into Scarwood Reach, where we killed a lot of extremely gigantic spiders (shudder!) and did a bit of “ridge running” (where you run along the tops of mountains to your destination, so as to avoid having to deal with the many hostile mobs down in the valleys) We finished off around quarter past four so that I could do my second Stair Walk before I re-did my nails. I did my Stair Walk, and because I now use the fire escape stairs (because I can go barefooted, and because it’s a titch cooler than the front stairs) we always bring a book with us to wedge the door open – the fire escape doors open into the stairwell, but they don’t open from the stairwell into the building. This afternoon, we get into the stairwell, but instead of turning around and wedging the door open, himself turned around…  and shut the door! “Julian!” I exclaimed, then “What are you doing!” as my exclamation was accompanied by a loud and ominous “clunk!“, as the door shut firmly behind us.  “Just… deciding to practice my walking a little bit more” replied himself, looking a trifle sheepish. Poor Julian, he had to go all the way down to the bottom where he was able to let himself out, and then he had to climb up the front stairs, all the way to the fifth floor, come around to the fire escape, and this time, wedge the door open. In the meantime, I’d gone down my two levels and was half way back up again, so the time wasn’t truly wasted, we both got the exercise, which is good, isn’t it? (*innocent smile*) Inside again, I repaired to the bathroom to remove my old nail polish, then I thoroughly cleaned and scrubbed my nails, dried them, and went out to the lounge to re-paint them (I do them in the lounge because it’s the only place where there’s enough light to see what I’m doing properly) I got the first coat on… it was drying… the phone rang… My favourite youngest daughter had made one of her all too rare “I think I’ll have a chat with Mum” calls. Himself had a bit of a chat with her, and told her that I’d ring her back once my nails were dried – which I did – and if any of you know how long mother and daughter chat sessions usually last, you’ll realise why my nails still have only one coat of nail polish on them 🙂 I’ll finish them off tomorrow… (*sigh* the things we mothers do for our offspring! I dunno… 😉 ) So that was pretty much my day…

I did note two things in The Age today – one which I found of some interest, and one which filled me with despair. The one I found interesting was titled “Why you should never eat a bacon sandwich: what you can – and can’t – eat” It’s worth reading – we’ve watched a few shows featuring one of the main contributors to the article, Dr. Michael Mosley, and (in his shows, anyway) he seems to know what he’s talking about, so I’m more than half inclined to at least hear what he’s got to say – the other contributors I’ve never heard of, but I have heard, from various sources, what they’re claiming – so again, I’m willing to listen. If you’re at all interested in general health and well being, you could do worse than to read the article – food for thought, anyway! 😉 The one that filled me with absolute despair was an article written by a Jewish journalist, who decided to walk through Paris (France), shortly after the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo and the Jewish supermarket. He just walked, interacted with no one, while being filmed by a friend with a hidden camera (he had also hired a bodyguard, just in case) I knew that antisemitism was on the rise in Europe, but I had no idea that things were this bad – especially in (supposedly sophisticated, enlightened, and educated) France. This is Europe, people! Have you forgotten so soon?!  The article was in The Age this morning – by this evening, the article has  been removed, leaving only the video tucked away in a remote corner where I suppose they hoped that no-one would be able to find it – no doubt they didn’t want to “offend other racial minorities” (you know who I’m talking about – I’m just not allowed to say it though, in case I offend someone! Bah! Political correctness gone beyond stupidity!) So I had to get my link to it elsewhere… Thanks, The Age – what a shame you’ve sunk so low!

Weigh-in this morning. Maybe the walking is doing some good – down to 103.8kg this morning (mind you, now that I’m off those pills for the moment, I’m shedding fluid in … well, losing a lot of it 🙂 ) Let’s see what transpires tomorrow morning.  I’m not holding my breath, though…

So look in again tomorrow evening – will I have finished painting my nails, or will I still be slumming it with only one coat of “Tokyo Pearl” polish adorning them? The person taking my blood this morning arrived before 9.30am, which was very good – got things over and done with without messing up the day too much – but then she made me feel guilty (I’m a past mater at feeling guilty when it’s not my fault! My mother taught me well!) – she was huffing and puffing, almost as much as I do after my measly two level Stair Walk, and told us that “she hadn’t been well” – so I felt guilty for making her climb up five flights of stairs 😦  So there you go – not much more to add tonight, but you can be sure there will be tomorrow night, so don’t miss out! Until then, bee good, have fun, and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

I promise! (besides, I paid for this template, so it’s gotta last!) – apart from the odd colour and header change, that is. I don’t promise not to change those! 😉 I Rifted most of the morning, leveling Asima up (she’s now level 18) and going through the Guild Bank overflow on Laethys, looking for crafting materials to miraculously turn into platinum on the Auction House for Hailol. Somehow we have to raise 1500 platinum… it may take a little while.. The rest of my day was spent going through blog templates, and finding them all wanting in one regard or another. Not being able to change font sizes between Header text and blog Post text is the real headache – what looks good as a Header font is grossly oversized for Post titles, and so forth. Last night, I found what I thought was a “nice” and totally suitable template, but when I came to actually write my post, all I could see was a thick black line! The editing text was so tiny that there was no way anyone could read it without a magnifying glass. Yes, I could have changed the font size to something I could edit with, and then changed it back to a decent size for any interested readers when I’d finished, but it shouldn’t be so complicated and messy! That’s just damn bad programming on WP’s part, and if they’re monitoring this, please [censored] fix it! So, as I said, I went through about half a dozen or so templates this afternoon, putting them all through their paces and testing them out. A couple were OK, but once again, the font size was something I just wasn’t willing to put up with – quite a few people have told me that the Post Title is far to big, and could I please do something about it? The answer to that was “No, I wish I could!”. Meanwhile, I’ve been maneuvered into paying all of $18 for this template, which hopefully, isn’t going to give me any nasty little surprises further down the editing track. The editing text size is tolerable (i.e. I can actually read it!), and so far, the Post titles don’t look as though they were designed for billboards! The Header is a little smaller than I’d like it, but given the amount of space reserved for it, maybe it’s best left the way it is… The little doo-dad over the header, by the way, is a Kanji symbol meaning “Winter” – in other words, me! 🙂

My favourite eldest daughter has got her timetable at long last, and she’ll have Mondays and Tuesdays off, so instead of coming over on Thursdays, as she did last year, she’ll now come over on a Tuesday instead. Uni goes back, for her, on March 11th – two days after my 49th Birthday 😉 – so between the lift being back in working order, and her going back to uni, we should be able to get in one more Thursday visit before she becomes a student again. Not that the day matters – I don’t care which day she wants to come over, as long as I get to see her – the same goes for my favourite youngest daughter too – are you reading this Kit-Kat!? 😉 The lift is supposed to be back in operation by the 25th, but according to himself, who makes semi-regular visits to the lift room to check on the progress  being made, they’re slightly ahead of schedule – let’s hope so, anyway (I’m keeping a close eye on the time – I have about three quarters of an hour before I’m due to go on my second Stair Walk for the day. Hopefully I’ll have finished this by then – I’ll try and type faster…) Sudden Food Topic: Julian managed to pick up some semi sun dried chili flakes the other day – they smell lovely, and I tasted a couple of the flakes (zero calories, too!) they have a really nice capsicum flavour, with just a hint of heat to them. Their beauty, to me, lies in their lack of calories – so last night I got himself to put a few into my Optifast Tomato soup… It made all the difference! A subtle amount of heat gave that soup just the little extra “zing” that it lacked (perhaps I should write to Optifast and suggest it to them?)(typing faster doesn’t work – it only means that I make more typos which I then have to waste time correcting! I think I’ll go back to normal speed typing…)

Weigh-in this morning. Well, once again, I went down one point – to 104.0kg. (rolls eyes heavenwards) Please don’t tell me I’m going to go through another one of these interminable “down by one degree at a time” patches!  Why can’t bodies say to themselves “OK, it’s Monday. I’m going to lose 1.5kg this week, so” *plonk* – 1.5kg vanishes into the sunset “There, that’s done – I’ll just rest for the remainder of the week *yawn* See’ya’ll next Monday!” – body dozes off… Unfortunately, bodies don’t work like that – but it would be much more nicer if they did!

Anyway, tune in again tomorrow night – who knows what news and gossip I’ll have for you by then! I ordered my other nail polishes from Willow Byron Bay this afternoon – I wonder if they’ll arrive in a small padded bag like the last one!? I was going to do my nails this afternoon, but I decided to write this early instead (half an hour to “Walkies!”) mainly because I wanted to see how a brand new post would look on the brand new template… Anyway, that’s the last new template for a while – I promised… the only things that might change are the colours and header – that’s allowable, isn’t it? Wednesday tomorrow – himself is hoping we’ll be able to get a little bit of Rifting in, which would be nice – and the new layout of my desk space seems to be working out OK too – my arm hasn’t been nearly as sore. BUT! My arm keeps getting stuck to the desktop – well, not stuck, exactly, but it doesn’t s-l-i-d-e nicely over the bench, like, say, a piece of paper, or a cloth. Julian said to use lots of hand and body lotion, but I said that that would just make the desktop all greasy and sticky. I tried wrapping a clean tea towel around my arm, but that didn’t work terribly well either, because it kept falling off. Oh, and we managed to get Dorevitch to come to the party (I actually meant apartment, but you knew that, didn’t you! 🙂 ) to take my blood test – they’ll be here tomorrow, sometime between 8am and 4pm, so that’s good 🙂 I wonder if they’ll change my Warfarin dose? Prolly not… So anyway, that’s it from me for today – so until tomorrow night, bee good, and please stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

New and different blog template (my ghod! can you all read this text? It’s minute in edit format! I can hardly read what I’ve written!) Well, I’ve changed the font, and enlarged it a bit – it’s slightly better now (and at least the text doesn’t just look like a black line anymore!) It’s a shame, really, as I quite liked this template – but if I can’t find a font that supports a decent size text, both for public reading and Editing purposes, then I can’t see it lasting all that long Once I’ve finished this post I shall have to go back and try all the allowable fonts (that is, WordPress provided fonts!) to see which ones look clearest for public reading, whilst not being too tiny for Editing purposes. And to think… I have around 2000+ fonts stored right here on my computer, any of which would be better than the ones that WordPress generously allows us to use (*grrrr!*) So, grizzles aside, today has been quite a fun day so far – Josh came over this morning and now my hair looks quite immaculate! 🙂 What a pity I have to lie down to sleep tonight 😉 I wish that the ubiquitous “They” could invent some sort of force-field (one you can breath through) that you could stick around your head to stop your hair getting mussed when you slept… ditto with something that you could put around your feet that you could walk on, but would not put any pressure whatsoever on any part of your foot – like when you’re swishing your feet in the air from a high chair, or a pier, or something. Sheer bliss, that would be! 🙂 Please don’t suggest walking with your feet in hot water bottles full of blood temperature water, either  – water wouldn’t do it because water exerts pressure around your feet anyway, and so would the bottle holding in the water. No, I’m talking about some sort of plain fresh air, held in place by some sort of invisible force-field… (Ooooh! Wouldn’t that send the fashion designers and shoe manufacturers into a tizzy! *giggle* and my poor cleaning lady would probably die from withdrawal symptoms!) Oh well, one day in the future, maybe… *sigh* Oh, and I must tell you – we received a really lovely surprise present in the mail today! We’ve been going to the same Veterinary Hospital for years and years and years – I first started going to them long ago when I was breeding Siamese cats. The Vet who owned the practice, Dr. Peter Cullen BVSC, used to come to our Cat Club (The Royal Sacred Siamese Cat Club of Victoria – I’d give you a link to it, but Google only seems to know that it exists, and little else – sorry!) once or twice a year to give talks on cat and kitten health, and various problems with breeding – he also used to “Vet In” (i.e. make sure all the cats entered were healthy and with no sign of fleas or other vermin) at a lot of cat shows, so we all got to know him fairly well. He was (and I believe still is) a wonderful Vet, and as I said, we’ve been going to the Whitehorse Veterinary Hospital for a very long time. The Hospital is now run by two brothers, Shaun and Rod Wynne, both excellent Vets, and an extremely well trained and experienced staff. If you’re anywhere near Whitehorse Road Blackburn and are in need of a good Vet, I can’t recommend them highly enough. Anyway, long story short, we received a lovely surprise present from them today – “A boutique photoshoot for everyone you love – including your four legged friend with Hair & Make up for two women plus $350 to spend on photos.”, at StudioDiva Photography – I’m not too sure how Flipper would react to something like that though 🙂 Maybe if we had a new little kitten – but that won’t be while Flipper is still with us – it would break her heart, poor old girl…

I Rifted a fair bit today, and I’m starting to plot and scheme of ways to get platinum and materials (crafting materials, that is) from Laethys to Hailol. Hailol really, really needs the “cash” with which to buy an extra Guild Bank Vault – and we could “borrow” (isn’t that a lovely term for robbing Peter to pay Paul? 🙂 ) some of the platinum from Laethys, but more to the point, the Laethys Guild Bank Overflow branch is loaded with stacks of crafting materials that they don’t really need or want, and most of them sell quite nicely on the Auction House… The trouble is that I already have 12 characters on both Laethys and Hailol so I’d have to move one of my girls off, to bring another girl on – which I’d really rather not do… but Julian could very easily transfer one of his Laethys characters over to Hailol with the goods – he still has plenty of room on both shards… so we’ll probably end up doing it that way – he can move his character back from whence it came after seven days. So really, all that has to be decided is how much platinum, and how many (crafting material) stacks of… what?… Unfortunately the Auction House on Hailol doesn’t seem to be quite as active and vibrant as the one on Laethys – I can’t even seem to sell off a stack of Cobalt Bars, even undercutting everyone else by 50 gold! I’ll let you know what I decide to do when I decide what to do myself! 🙂

Weigh-in. This morning was all a bit of a rush, but my weight was down another one point to 104.1kg. I barely had time to write it down before I had to sprint off to get my Stair Walk in before my shower! Most mornings I can take things a bit slower, but I had to be presentable by 11am, today, and not mid afternoon! 😉 When I finish writing this I’ll have to race off for my après déjeuner  Stair Walk – I dunno – rush, rush, rush! That’s all I seem to do these days! 😉 I guess it’ll all be worth it in the long run… (it’d better be!)

So once more I would exhort you all to look in again tomorrow night – see if I’ve come up with any brilliant ideas for moving platinum and crafting materials between shards; find out if I’ve ordered the three new nail polishes that I want to get, yet, and most importantly, did I fall down the stairs on either of my two Daily Stair Walks – no, not really – I don’t think I’d be capable of writing anything if I’d fallen down the stairs! The “most importantly” bit would have to be… how Flipper’s feeling? No? Ummm…Oh, I can’t think… well, while I’m waiting to remember what would have been the most important thing for me to tell you, I’ll just say that I’d probably also tell you how my weight went… *sigh* Never mind, I can’t remember what that most important thing was 😉 I’m sure it’ll come to me… probably tomorrow! 😉 So you’d better have a look in tomorrow, to find out what it was, hmmm?! So please bee good, and stay safe until then, OK? ciao, all! 🙂