I’ve gone and changed the blog Theme – again! Although the header and the background colour are exactly the same code, I have no idea if they look the same to you. They look fine to me on Chrome, so if they don’t match on IE, Firefox, or Opera, please don’t tell me! I don’t want to know, OK?! That said, it was done a bit piecemeal… Julian and I had intended to spend most of the after-lunchtime day Rifting – unfortunately Josh wasn’t able to join us, but it’s probably just as well he didn’t… I logged on around noon-ish, and ran around the other shards, picking up more of my ever-so-cute Black Dire Riding Squirrels, and in the middle of a very short bit of side questing, I got unceremoniously tossed out of the game – right back to the desktop! Trying to get back in again was unhelpful – the server, it appeared, was down for the count. All the shards were offline, to the point where they even disappeared off the shard list! All in all, the game was unavailable for almost two hours… so what did I do in that almost two hours? Why, made the header that you see at the top of the page, of course! What else did you expect me to do? Play solitaire? 😉 Actually, I did (play solitaire) for a bit, but then I got bored and decided to do a little bit of “maintenance” on the blog. Do you like the result? It’s a little different – the text is in “book format” (according to the blurb on the Theme description), and although there was a section for adding “Widgets” (the calender, archive list and meta info, etc.) and I did add them, they appear to have… not appeared, for some reason. I don’t know – maybe they’ll mysteriously appear tomorrow morning, maybe they won’t. Will anyone miss them? Again, I don’t know – I certainly won’t miss them, but if you do, let me know, and I’ll see if I can sweet-talk them into making a reappearance.

Once Rift came back online, we decided to see if we could finish off the last little bit of the Tarken Glacier quest chain. We had one thing left to do… I have to admit that for once in my life I was completely and utterly confused! 😉 In the end I just Tab-targeted, and lashed out with everything I had. Seemed to work, because we accomplished our goal! 🙂 I absolutely hate, loath, and detest Tab-targetting, and it takes a lot to get me to use it – but sometimes it’s the only way to get things done. You see, when you hit the Tab key, it targets (or highlights) what it thinks is the next best dressed mob, or enemy. Unfortunately, it nearly always picks the wrong next best dressed mob, or enemy, which can leave you in a real mess when multiple mobs suddenly all notice you at once, and decide that you look softer and easier to smear into the ground than the other big monsters they’d been attacking. As I said, I hate using it, and it takes a lot to get me to use it – but it’s a damn sight easier to just hit the Tab key than it is to try to mouse click-target something in the middle of a full scale battle! Well, we killed off that Boss, and then we had to go around to various places to “collect our accolades”, which was OK, except that the last one invited us to a party, where we were supposed to drink a lot of ghastly grog stuff, get roaring drunk, and punch people out. Well, I hate to be a wet blanket, but… isn’t that what we’re trying to stamp out at the moment? In Victoria, anyway. I’m sorry, but I feel it really sends the wrong message out – we want young people not to go out and get so bloody blind drunk that they start indiscriminately punching people out, not imply that it’s a really fun thing that all “mammals” (as they refer to humans) should do to have a rip-roaring good time! If people want to get drunk, fine – do it in your own home. If people want to punch things, fine – buy a punching bag and set it up in your garage! Anyway, so we get past that really, really fun time (NOT!), and guess what? We’re politely asked to take part in a “Chronicle”, to end the area, and the game so far. Chronicles, according to Rift Wiki, are instanced areas designed for 1 or 2 players to complete. Most players are able to complete this type of instance on their own. This particular Chronicle was for one player, so although we’d gone through the whole lot as a team, here we are at the end, split up! Not. Happy. Jan! Well, himself went first, to see if I’d be able to cope on my own (if we decided I wasn’t, he would have played my character for me. Not cheating, just teamwork!) The first part wasn’t too hard – I would have been able to do it reasonably easily. The second part was a lot harder – there was a really tough, mean Boss who had a lot of extremely strong attacks – at one point he managed to kill Dramiele (Julian), and re-generate himself. On his second attempt, Julian killed him off, but the wretched instance is bugged! From the number of complaints about it in the forums, apparently it happens quite a lot – you kill the big Boss, and you’re immediately told that he’s planted a bomb in the middle of the area which you have to diffuse before everything and everyone is blown to hell in a handbasket… according to what we read, when it works properly, it’s not a tough job to diffuse it, but – you guessed it! We hit a bugged patch, and now Dramiele is stranded – can’t finish the Instance, can’t finish the Chronicle, can’t finish the segment. Which means that I can’t, either. We’ll keep trying it, every couple of days, to see if we can fluke an un-bugged version, but we may have to raise a ticket (call for Moderator help) to get it completed. So, our two level 65’s, stuck in a sort of a limbo, have retired from the field for now (besides, I have Dailies to do tomorrow!), and… we’ve started up a couple of Defiant newbies – Sylversong (me) and Saudades (himself) – both Mages, so no healing, unfortunately, but it should be fun – Julian hasn’t played a Defiant for a long time, so I’m sort of showing him where everything is 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was disheartening! I did so well yesterday! Today, I only went down 1 point, to 106.3kg 😦 And I was sooo hoping to be under 106kg by Wednesday. Ah well, that’s my wretched body for you… Hopefully I’ll go down a bit tomorrow, but I’ll most likely go up, or stay the same. S’not fair…

Anyway, tune in again tomorrow night to see if I’ve changed the blog Theme yet again, or if it’s the same – or if we’ve managed to get a clear shot at that horrible Chronicle and get the segment finished, or if we’re still languishing in no-man’s land. Find out, too, if my new sparkly-pearly red-like-my-hair streaks nail polish went on OK and if it looks any good, and see if my weight stayed the same or went up – because at this stage it’s not likely to have gone down! So until this time tomorrow night, bee good, and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

The first Birthday of the year… belatedly, unfortunately, but it’s still first off the rank for 2015. My favourite eldest daughter’s Birthday was on January 12th, however, she’d been busy each weekend after that, so we finally got to have her BBB (Big Birthday Bash) today. And a good time was had by all! 🙂 Lots of happy chatter, with champagne (and mineral water for me) Nando’s chicken tenders, chips, and a home made salad – a good bottle of red, a nice bottle of white (and more mineral water for me) Followed by a dessert of a kind of white chocolate mousse cake, seeded with dark choc chips and sponge cake layers. I had my Cappuccino Optifast Bar (and mineral water) I also had a sniff of the red wine, a Brown Brothers straight Merlot, 2012 vintage, called “18 Eighty Nine”. It was supposed to have “berry flavours, with hints of chocolate and spice”, and it sounded so delicious that I had to at least sniff it (and you could vaguely smell a whiff of chocolate!) though I wasn’t game to taste it. Not yet, anyway. Wait until I hit my goal weight and get myself stable on a maintenance diet, and then I’ll definitely try some! And have a mouthful of whatever cake’s on offer! Then we all had coffee, and a long discussion about TV series, and what was good and what wasn’t. Julian and I have come to the conclusion that there are too many good shows to watch, and not enough time to watch them all in! As you know, Lisa and I are watching “Person of Interest”, Marvel’s “Agents of Shield”, “Lost Girl”, which I told you about a couple of nights ago, “Glee”, and “Orphan Black” – a really excellent show with an unusual story line. Someone has created 8 (I think!) female clones, and they’re being killed off, one by one. Who is doing this, and why? What was/is their purpose? Why is only one of them fertile, and able to produce a child, when they were all genetically engineered to be sterile? The remaining clones are being hunted, and one is dying from a condition that seems to be, or may turn out to be congenital. The plot thickens… They’re all being played by the same actress, Tatiana Maslany, who’s doing a really fantastic job handling each individual character, and we’re both waiting eagerly for the show to re-start. Before that we watched “Fringe” – another excellent Sci-Fi show – look here for a better synopsis than I could write in this blog. I just found out today that Lisa has the whole five seasons, which we will put onto the file server so that Julian and I can see them from go to whoa. Another of the series we watch is “Castle”, starring Nathan Fillion (anyone remember him from the brilliant, if prematurely axed series “Firefly”? I do wish they hadn’t axed it when they did, it was shaping up to be a really good series!) Anyway, we have the whole series of that to watch, plus there’s our “Star Trek Enterprise”, Julian’s “Callan: the Colour Years, and quite a lot more – so you can see why I said ‘too many good shows to watch, and not enough time to watch them all in!’, before! The next Birthday coming up will be Julian’s, on February 4th, then me, on March 9th (see! I wasn’t born on the Ides of March, so there! 😛 ), then Terry, May 12th, then Neale, December 12th, and then my favourite youngest daughter, Kate, on December 12th… and then it starts all over again in January, with my favourite eldest daughter, Lisa 🙂

This morning before everyone arrived, I took my girls (Rift girls, that is, not my daughters!) through their Daily Grind, and sorted out my Minions. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to go shard hopping to pick up my latest acquisition that all my girls now have – A Black Dire Squirrel. It’s a cute as all get-out riding squirrel, and usually (usually!) these cute squirrel mounts are an extremely rarest of rare drop from a “Limited Edition: Regulos’ Trove” lockbox – the chances of actually getting one out of one of those lockboxes are so slim as to be almost non-existant! Well, when I logged in last night to sort out my Minions and to collect my Daily Patron’s Present, I noticed that they were selling these squirrels,  for a very limited time, from the Rift Shop – for 2,700 Credits. I just checked, and at time of writing, they’ll still be available for another 1 Day and 8 Hours, so get in quick or miss out! 😉 I, of course, promptly bought some more Credits and got myself one! I’ve always wanted a squirrel mount! 🙂 they’re sooo cute! And the beauty of it is, if you buy a mount from the Rift Shop, it counts for all your characters, so each and every one of my girls has one in their mail box! (*hugs self with delight*) 🙂 So that’s what I’ll be doing after writing this – going around, shard hopping, collecting all those cute little squirrels (well, they’re not “little”, they’re sit on-able and rideable, and when they’re idle, they stand up on their hind legs and look just sooo adorable! (anyone would think that I actually like squirrels! 😉 )

Weigh-in this morning was a pleasant surprise – I was, as usual, expecting the worst – that I’d have gone back up (that’ll probably happen tomorrow!), or that I’d stayed the same (and that’ll happen the day after I go up!) however, I’d gone down another 4 points, to 106.4kg! I suppose I can now say that I’m comfortably within the 106kg zone so that if I go up (as I probably will!), I’ll hopefully still be within the 106kg zone. Hopefully. Here’s hoping I go down again, though… (but I probably won’t 😦 )

So drop by again tomorrow night – find out how our Australia Day Holiday went – it’s also Julian’s brother and sister’s Birthdays, too – they’re not twins, there’s three years between them (and then three years between Julian and his sister! How’s that for planning! 😉 ) and honestly, I’m not sure if it’s a good or a bad thing – children having Birthdays so close to Christmas (like Kate and Lisa, for instance! 😉 ) Knowing us, we’ll probably spend most of the time tomorrow Rifting, either together or separately, or in a trio with Josh. I’m looking forward to finishing off Tarken Glacier – it’s been fun, but I don’t think I’ll be too devastated to leave the Plane of Water – it’s not been my favourite zone, actually… Which has been my favourite zone? I dunno… probably Brevane… Anyway, as I said, drop by tomorrow night, and find out how we spent Australia Day. You might even be lucky enough, if I’m not too frazzled and nervous about Wednesday, to find out when we plan on going shopping for some smaller slacks for me, the new entertainment unit, the sofa bed, the end tables (I lied about the Tiffany lamps, we have a couple of very nice lamps already in the room) and the rug! Oh, and I’ll probably even throw in a line or two about how my weigh-in went that morning! 😉 So until then, bee good, and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

Colours ain’t colours, after all! Well, the missing header was back this morning, but I decided to switch blog Themes, anyway – after all, I’d just about finished this header, and I thought… why not make use of it? So I did, and this is the result. However, the old Yellow Pages ad: “Not. Happy. Jan!” springs to mind. The background colour of the Theme, and the background colour of the header are exactly (exactly!) the same – #2B222C, or, in RGB parlance (RGB stands for Red Green Blue) 43, 34, 44. So why do the colours display differently depending on what browser you’re using? I use Chrome, and there is a very clear difference between the Theme background, and my header. If you look at the blog using IE, both the background and the header are identical colours. If I twiddle the colours to make them match in Chrome, they look different in IE, and different again in Opera – but we haven’t bothered to check it against Firefox, because the odds are that it will be different too. Apparently, just like oils, colours aren’t colours, either, Ollie! I might try finding another colour system that does display the header and the background properly, but it’s much more likely that I’ll swap Themes again before I do that – so if the colours don’t match on your browser, put up with it until I find a less recalcitrant Theme!

This morning I Rifted – took the girls through their Daily Grinds, and I’m pleased to say that the Artisan Marks they need are beginning to build up. Then I quested Crystalcat for a bit – she’s in a very unique position… She was “born” Bahmi (a Defiant race), and did all her beginner/baby quests in Freemarch, the Defiant starting area. When she was about level 18 or so, she decided to change Factions, and became a Guardian… and this is where her peculiarity lies. She’s done all her “baby” quests, and is now level 24 and should be progressing along the quests that will take her higher and into other areas… but according to the Silverwood Guardian quest givers, she hasn’t done any of the quests that a Guardian character would normally follow, so she’s having to battle it out with level 9 Goblins! Oh, the shame of it all! 🙂 She is getting some experiance points for these baby quests, but really! They hit me once, and die? Just because they hit me? I’m racing through these pointless quests, but it’s a real bore. Trion should flag quests of a similar experience level as “done” once a character has completed them, regardless of Faction, that way it wouldn’t matter if a character changed Faction, they’d be at the same quest experience level, whichever side they were on at the time. When you get to a certain level, and get enough “planarite”, you’re given a pretty “buckle” for your belt that’s capable of holding different enhancement properties, called “Planar Essences” – but Crystalcat now has two of them! One Defiant “buckle”, and one Guardian “buckle” – which one should she wear? It doesn’t really make any difference – they both perform the same function, and can carry exactly the same sorts of Planar Essences – so why did they bother to make one a Defiant one, and the other a Guardian one? So that one can have a pretty red stone in the middle, and the other a pretty blue one? Why not make them both green stones, and be done with it?! Sometimes I just don’t understand the way Game Developers minds work… (*shakes head sadly*) Anyway, Crystalcat romped gaily through Silverwood, slaying Goblins with a glare, until lunch time. After lunch, Jademoss and Dramiele took over and romped through Tarken Glacier, slaying, and being slain! And we’d been doing so well, too! You know, if we have one quarrel with Rift Game Developers, it’s that sometimes their quests are so lacking in information as to be almost unintelligible! “Go and kill 24 parasites” – what parasites? Where? What do they look like? It’s a damn big circle we have to look in – give us a hint, already! and “Lob a bit of broken whatever into a lump of rock and jam it up with fallen star thingies” – well, those weren’t the exact words, but roughly translated, that’s what it meant. Once again, we had no idea… Generally speaking, if it sparkles, you can interact with it. Out there, with all the snow flurries, sparkling frost, glowing eddies, and Elite Mobs at every turn, it’s very hard to tell what’s sparkling for you, and what’s just sparkling! AArrrgghhh! And then we got caught up in a Nightmare Rift and decided to join the Raid group which was battling it. Then he died, and then I died, and no sooner had we both resurrected than we both died again… and then we repeated the process. While we were busy resurrecting for the second time (or was it third, by then? I fergit – I just remember that it took over a platinum at the Healers, afterwards!) the Raid group managed to kill the last Nightmare Boss and close the Rift, and it was shortly after that that we called it a day and went back to town to dust down and process our loot. S’funny, you know – every time I think “This must be about the last quest out here – I wonder what we’ll do next?”, some damned quest giver or other rears their ugly head and hands us a new one! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was… hopeful? I went down another two notches to 106.8kg – unfortunately, not far enough into the 106kg zone for me to feel “safe” there, yet! Still, it’s a promising start to the weekend – hopefully I can keep on going down – at least until next Wednesday, anyway. As you know, we have my favourite eldest daughter’s BBB (Big Birthday Bash) on tomorrow – much the same as we had for my favourite youngest daughter and Lisa’s husband, Neale, just before Christmas. Nando’s, salad and chips, and a cake – though I believe the cake isn’t a Red Velvet Trifle, which is what they had last time. And, of course, it’ll be a champagne flute of mineral water for me, and my usual Optifast Bar (Cappuccino, tomorrow! 🙂 ) When I get down to 90kg, I’ll think about going onto a maintenance diet, but I may decide to go down a bit more first – after all, I will put on weight when I start eating again, so I want to be low enough that I can afford to put on a couple of kilos without too much noticeable difference. Maybe I should aim to get down to 85kg first… or maybe 80kg… 75kg might be best though… I don’t think I want to go much lower than that…

Anyway, tune in again tomorrow night to find out how the BBB went, what sort the cake turned out to be (and if I tasted it! 😉 ) and what she got for her Birthday (we’re giving her a pair of shoes) Let me know what you think of the new layout of the blog, and how the colours look to you from your end, and I’ll tell you what my weight did – whether it went back into the 107kg zone, or if it stayed the same. Hopefully I’ll be able to report that it went down again, but I wouldn’t count on it – this is me we’re talking about, remember! So until then, bee good, and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

At time of writing, is missing its header! Don’t look at me, it was there this morning! Hopefully it’s just a glitch in the matrix – or maybe I subconsciously knew something this afternoon, when I went to see if there were any new blog Themes… I found one that I liked, and started working on a header… I’m not sure what’s happening tomorrow, but if I get a chance, and the header that belongs on this one isn’t back, I may try switching over – no promises though! 🙂

We’ve been very busy today – this morning I completed the three Daily Crafting runs, and got my much needed Artisan Marks – it’s a shame they’re “Soulbound” to each individual character, and that they can’t be shared or “donated” – but I can see the reasoning behind it. Ambitious (read: “greedy”) people might skill up several characters and set them all off collecting as many Artisan Marks, Master Craftsman Marks, and Grandmaster Craftsman Marks as possible, then give them all to one character, thereby gaining an advantage by being able to buy a whole lot of Epic recipes at once – and remember, you don’t have to be a high level character to use the high level recipes, and make high level and Epic items – which you’d then turn around and sell for quite a tidy profit (because you wouldn’t be able to use them yourself yet!) So anyway, I did my daily grind, reset my Minions (I forgot to do it last night! Naughty me!) gobbled a hasty and very early lunch, and then we were off…

I had a medical appointment around noon, and then we went on to Shoppingtown to drop a few things off at the Dry Cleaner and get a few other bits and pieces – I got my Jurlique hand lotion and hand wash (which smells yummy, by the way!), and we did a bit of grocery shopping… but we forgot to get the salad-y type vegetables and the Red Velvet Trifle dessert for the BBB (Big Birthday Bash) on Sunday, so himself will have to go out again tomorrow morning, which we had been hoping to avoid because we’d been sort of planning to have your Telara Sunday on Saturday – ah well, the best laid plans of mice and all that… Once we got home, and had a very welcome cup of coffee in our hot and sweaty little paws, I went looking to see if there were any new blog Themes (I usually check about once a week) – there were a couple that I wasn’t all that impressed with, and a couple of new-ish ones that I did like, so I chose one, and went off to work on a suitable header for it. This one was a bit harder than the other ones have been because I didn’t really have a very clear idea of what I wanted – it was a matter of try this… try that… nah… what about this… what if I did it like that… In the end I found a suitable font (well, it’s not really a font, so much as a dingbat… ) with which to decorate the sides of the header, and I’m still looking for a nice colour for the background, so it’s not quite finished yet, but it almost is… I wonder what happened to the header for this one, though! Maybe it’ll be back by the time I’ve finished this…

I’m just looking around my desk, and wondering at the plethora of sentimental ornamentation on it. There used to be only a few little things… and then, as we tidied up the spare room, and other neglected areas of the house, small objects came to light that we’d forgotten that we had. Well, we hadn’t exactly forgotten about them, we just… hadn’t missed them, if you know what I mean… Julian had said “Be ruthless!”, but how can you be ruthless with a tiny, cute, beanbag tiger? How can you be heartless and cold, faced with a black cat glove puppet that you’ve had since you were four years old? How can you throw out an absolutely gorgeous glass (I think it’s glass!) mottled to look like leopard skin, votive candle holder, with a matching lid featuring a prowling leopard? And the blue and white Chinese Ginger Jar?… I could go on. Small ornaments that the kids have given me over the years, clocks, crystals, mirrors, three calenders – all these things have gradually come to join me at my desk. Instead of having the acres of room that I started out with, I now have only a few small areas of clear desktop on which to put my cup of tea or coffee. But I’m not sorry for it – all of these things are memories, more than objects, and aren’t good memories treasures to hang onto? 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was much more hopeful – I shed three points and went down to 107.0kg  – probably due to all the fretting over my appointment with Dr. Y. next week! Good! That means I should shed another three kilos between now and the appointment! Perhaps I should worry more, generally… trouble is, I start worrying about something, and something else comes along and grabs my attention, and I forget to worry! tsk! Hopefully I’ll be down into the 106kg zone tomorrow – but I won’t hold my breath! Knowing me, I’m just as likely to go up again, or sit on 107.0kg for the next three weeks…

So call in again tomorrow night – see if my header is back, or if I’ve changed blog themes and finished the new header I was working on today, and everything will be new and different! 🙂 Find out if my weight has gone down – I actually did a bit of walking today, so it might have! Cross your fingers, toes and eyes… Isn’t it strange! I really don’t mind walking, but I can’t balace properly in shoes, and tend to stagger around like a drunk – take my shoes off, and I walk perfectly well, except for ending up bent over double because of my back. I need new shoes – the ones I have are not much longer for this world, I fear, so I’m both annoyed that I’m going to have to go off and find someone who can make me some shoes, and exhilarated and excited that once these shoes die, I’ll have an excuse to go barefooted, all the time! 🙂 So anyway, find out if my weight has been good to me and gone down, or whether it’s still teasing me by staying the same, or going up. Until then, bee good, and stay safe! ciao, all!

For my daily bread, so to speak – or more like for my daily Artisan Marks, really, but I think you know what I mean. I only had time to do all of Jademoss’s Daily manufacturing runs, and had just started assembling the items I was going to need to complete Wyntercat’s tasks, when my favourite eldest daughter arrived. We discussed a couple of stories she’d uploaded to a fan fiction site, and no, I’ll not give you the url for them because they’re, umm… shall we just say, “not family friendly”, and while I’m sure 99.5% of my readers are adults, who knows who else may stumble across the links? Better to be safe than sorry 🙂 It’s a shame really, because she writes very well, and tells a good story – but these were maybe just a little too risqué… I think writing runs in the family – my grandfather (my mother’s father), E. P. Marshell, wrote short stories for magazines, and his sister Agnes also wrote under the pseudonym of “Philip Marshell”. I’ve written an article or two, and a children’s bedtime story called “The White Cat” – many years ago. I think I stall have the magazine that they appeared in, though it’s probably still in storage. Anyway, then we had lunch, and repaired to the lounge room where we watched two episodes of “Person of Interest”, and three episodes of “Lost Girl”, which we’d started watching before I got all immersed in “Person of Interest”. We’re well into season 4 of “Person of Interest”, and things are starting to get really tense and exciting. We’re also starting to run out of episodes – they’re still on hiatus (whatever that’s supposed to mean!) and as we won’t be getting more episodes any time soon, we decided to watch a bit of something else as well, and ration our “Person of Interest” viewing so that we’re not left waiting too long for the next episodes. As we’d only seen the Pilot, and one other episode of “Lost Girl”, we decided to watch it from the beginning again. It’s more of the vampires, and werewolves, and witches, oh my! type of fantasy show, and is about this young woman who, when the story starts, doesn’t know what she is – all she knows is that sometimes she wakes up next to a dead boyfriend (it turns out later on that she’s a Succubus) While working behind the bar of an hotel, she accidentally rescues a young pick-pocket from the clutches of a man who tried to drug her in order to have his wicked way with her – of course the nasty man ends up dead, with a big smile on his face, but the investigating police officers sense something different about this death! Well, of course they would! Because one is a Werewolf, and the other is a Siren (as in the “singing sailors to their doom on the rocks” type of siren? I did mention that this was a real fantasy type of show, didn’t I? 🙂 ) Anyway, the scatty girl that Bo rescued thinks that all this supernatural stuff is w-a-y cool, and insists on joining the party. And that’s about as much as I can tell you about “Lost Girl” as we’ve only watched the first three episodes (including the Pilot) You probably think that I’m really weird, enjoying those types of shows, but hey! I have a reputation to maintain! People have thought I was weird since before I started going to kindergarten, and I never really fitted in at school…

Back to the mundane! 🙂 We have to be out tomorrow morning, but I hope to be getting a bit of shopping done in the afternoon – I need some more supplies from Jurlique (hand wash and hand cream), and I fear that we’re going to have to lash out for new slacks for me! I got three pairs of slacks about a month or so ago? and I was totally amazed that I fitted into a size 24 – I can’t even remember when I last fitted into a size 24! Well, the size 24 slacks are now falling off me, and it’s only the fact that my thighs aren’t yet quite as slim as they could be, that’s stopping them from falling down around my ankles. Look out size 22, here I come! I’m stunned that I’ve come down three whole dress/slacks sizes! Ha! And everyone said I wouldn’t be able to do it without weight loss surgery! Mind you, I still have another 17 kilos to go (and maybe a bit more after that too – we’ll see how I feel about it when I get down to 90kg, in about four – four and a half months) I do think that the rate at which I’m losing weight is slowing down though – which is most disappointing, but I’m quite happy on this diet, and quite prepared to stay on it for as long as it takes me to get to my goal weight.

Weigh-in this morning wasn’t too bad, I suppose, I went down one point… one measly point! to 107.3kg. NOT good enough! I’m sure I was going down faster a month ago – I must go back and look at my graphs… Hmmm… I’ve just been back to August 18th 2014, when I started the diet. Since then, I’ve dropped one kilo approximately every… 6 to 10 days? A lot in less than six days, but none took more than 10 days, and that’s not counting this time. So I guess I’m still losing weight at an “average” (don’t you just hate that word?!) rate – it just seems so much slower this time, for some reason… maybe it’s because I spent 4 days on the same weight – I dunno… I hit the 107kg zone on January 15th – it’s now January 22nd, a week ago… so I suppose I shouldn’t be complaining – yet! (but I’m going to… because I can! 😉 )

So anyway, call back in again tomorrow night, and find out all the latest… Did I go clothes shopping, or am I going to be typically lazy, and leave it for another couple of days? 🙂 Will I have sold any more of the left-over weapons on the Auction House, or will they all be shipped off to Crystalcat and Wyntercat for “disassemblage”? And what about my weight? Will I be pleased with tomorrow’s weigh-in for once, or will I still be ranting and raving about not losing weight quickly enough, and how it’s not fair! Find out the answers to these questions, and more, right here, at the same time, on the same bat(ty) blog! 🙂 Until then, bee good, and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

Daily Treadmill, of manufacturing assorted items for delivery to various areas, in order to “earn” Artisan Marks, so that I can buy much needed crafting recipes. I also managed to get two Achievements – the first was for crafting an Epic item*, and the second one was for crafting 10 Epic items. You see, after I’d done Wyntercat’s Daily Treadmill, I fiddled around a bit with her costume… I didn’t really like what she’d been wearing, so I got her a new outfit… and then decided to change its colour. I’d bought a few special dyes before – they were a once off special to do with some sort of World Event. They were very expensive, so I couldn’t buy many… however you can buy the recipes to make them, and I’d bought three of four before I ran out of Artisan Marks. I needed extra Dark Olive and Olive dyes – both of which are Epic items – but I couldn’t find the recipes, so now that I’d earned myself a few more Artisan Marks, I settled for Dark Sepia and Sepia, which I immediately read and learnt. Looking in my recipe list for the new Sepia ones, lo and behold, I find that the reason I couldn’t find the Olive recipes was because I’d already bought and learnt them – I’d just never used them – so all was well that ended well, and I made my dyes. The first bottle produced earned me the “Creating an Epic item” Achievement, but each dye you make produces nine bottles of the stuff, so by the time I started on the second batch, I earned the second Achievement! I believe I’ll get the full Achievement “Now You’re Just Showing Off!” when I’ve created 50 Epic items, whether they’re the special dyes, clothes, bags, weapons, runes, or whatever – as long as they’re Epic quality. This morning himself worked on Body Corporate stuff for a bit, then got back into the spare room, which has been vacuumed, but not mopped. We’ve sorted out what furniture we’re keeping, and what’s going to good homes, and we’re about ready to go sofa bed, and the rest, shopping. We can’t go tomorrow, because my favourite eldest daughter is coming over, and we can’t go on Friday because we’re already committed to something else. Saturday we’ll be Rifting instead of Sunday, because Sunday will be said favourite eldest daughter’s BBB (Big Birthday Bash), and Monday is a Public Holiday – does anyone else get the feeling that the Powers That Be are trying to prevent us from completing the spare room?! Yeah? Thought so… Tuesday’s a possibility, but not a probability – I have my appointment with Dr. Y. on Wednesday, so on Tuesday I’ll probably be lying down in a darkened room taking laudanum, in an attempt to prevent me from having fits of the vapours! No, not really, but I will be quite jittery and nervy, none the less… Crikey, I’m nervous now, just thinking about it! However this time next week will come… eventually…

This afternoon we had a short Rift session – we missed last Sunday’s because of the spare room project, and as I said before, we won’t get a look in this weekend – however, next Monday is a distinct possibility, and it’s to be hoped that Josh will be able to join us in Telara, as well. It should be a lot of fun. We finished mapping the last little bit of the Tarken Glacier this afternoon, but we didn’t find anything spectacular, just a lot of Elites (extra hard to kill!), and ice… and snow flurries, which confuse the heck out of my poor little cursor – it gets itself lost amongst all the snowflakes, you see, and it gets very upset when it can’t find me. We’ve finished off the great, long jumping quest that got us so confused last time, and quite a few other quests besides, but I think we’ve almost reached the denouement – the final Big Boss rift. We’ll probably die, several times, at least – but death is fleeting in Telara, after all, and it’s really only the Guild Bank funds that will suffer from our demise, as we raid them to pay for our resurrections 🙂 ….And then? Well, we’ll probably start all over again… whether with older, more mature level 60 characters, who know the lie of the land and the terrible creatures that they’ll be facing, or fresh-faced, wide eyed little girls and boys, eager to go out adventuring in the great wide land that is Telara! On the other hand, we can take our cynical, hard-bitten, battle scarred current characters out Bounty hunting, or running Dungeons and Instances… Ahhh… decisions, decisions! Could we have some think music with that, please? 🙂

Weigh-in this morning went a little better than it has for the past four days (glares at scales under the desk) I went down four points, from 107.8 to 107.4kg, thank heavens! I was beginning to think I was never going to start going down again! So, at least this is a start! Remember, body, I have only six days left to get into, or below, the 106kg zone, so, get on with it, or else! I just might be tempted to get a knife and start carving slabs off!

Tune in again tomorrow night – what gems will we have watched on the television tomorrow – will my favourite eldest daughter have brought any more episodes of Person of Interest?, or Agents of Shield? I wish there’d been more episodes of Fringe, and I do wish that the Orphan Black crew would come back from their holidays – but whatever we watch, it’ll be good! 🙂 I’m sure you’re all as interested as I am to see if I’ve managed to sell any of the “practice” weapons that Crystalcat made during her great Crafting attempt – I managed to get all of them on the Auction House today (it took ages! There were so many of them!) and every ounce of gold and platinum that I make from the sale of those weapons will be going back into the Guild Bank coffers… Oh, and if I remember, I might even tell you what my weight did, too – whether it went up (bad), down (good!), or stayed the same (no! no! please!! not that!! *sob*) So until tomorrow night – bee good, and stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

*Epic items are sort of like gold plated Rolls Royce items – you can tell they’re special by their beautiful neon magenta names, and by the neon magenta border around their little square icons. Only one other class of item is higher, and that’s Relic, which has a neon burnt orange name and icon border. Both Epic and Relic items are much sought after, and usually fetch better than very good prices on the Auction House!)

Day, today! Poor old Flipper had her visit to the Vet – she was “most put out!”, and yelled blue murder when Julian put her in her carry cage… She had her regular examination, including having her temperature taken. I don’t know, I think if anyone tried to shove a thermometer up my, ummm… well, you know where they take a cat’s temperature – surely I don’t have to spell it out! Yeah, if anyone tried to do that to me, I reckon they’d be bleeding out on the floor, and I’d be on my way to hide in Peru, or somewhere else, far, far, away! The she had her Cartrophen injection, which she doesn’t seem to mind too much – probably because she knows that she doesn’t feel so stiff and sore after she’s had it – and she had a couple of mats cut out of her fur. She’s a Norwegian Forest Cat with long fur, and as she’s become older and stiffer, it isn’t as easy for her to groom herself as well as she used to, and unfortunately, that means that she gets little mats here and there in her fur. Normally we snip them out ourselves, but when they’re in places that are hard to get to, or around the front of her neck where we might cut her if she struggled the wrong way (she hates being picked up and held!) we take her up to the Vet and get them to cut those ones out. Anyway, she had one on the inside of her thigh, and one on her backside, and it’s just as well that we got the Vet to do those ones, because she objected very strongly, and struggled a lot. As much as she hated the whole procedure, apart from a lot of indignant squawks, she settled down the minute she got home and out of her carry cage. Then we went off for my Warfarin blood test, and apparently I’m stable and still on the same dosage (2.5mg per night), and my INR (rate at which the blood clots – for someone like me, high is good, low is bad!) has gone up to 2.1, which is good, and about where it’s supposed to be if I don’t want to get another couple of lungfuls of blood clots! Next test is due on February 17th (I’d better write that in my diary before I forget! – Done!) After that, I went off to Inglot, as I said I would, and had a look at the colours they had in the “breathable” nail polishes. I came home with two of them. Unfortunately they don’t have names, only numbers, but one is a sort of pearlescent, slightly sparkly, red-ish colour which goes extremely well with the red streaks in my hair, and the other is the most gorgeous, fantabulous pearlescent, deep kingfisher/peacock blue! If they turn out as well, and wear as well, as the pretty purple one I’m currently wearing, I shall be very well pleased indeed! 🙂

Remember how I said yesterday that I needed to create a Weaponsmith in Rift, so that I’d be able to make shields and maces for Julian (and anyone else who wanted them, for that matter)? Well, I made a bit of a mistake this morning, and wasted the credits I spent for an extra Skill slot on the wrong girl! 😦 She could have done it, but I would have had to keep buying skill boosters to get her to level up quickly… so I sighed, forked out some more $$$, and bought another Skill slot, and this time gave it to someone who had a Trove of Experience Boosters – Crystalcat. I started this morning; by the time Flipper had come back from the Vet and we’d had a cup of coffee, I had her almost up to Grandmaster (second highest crafting skill level) – I gave her a short break while we were over the road, doing our bits and pieces, and continued again when we got home. She’s now a Savant – 450/450 Weaponsmith. So now, between Wyntercat and Crystalcat, there’s no weapon that I can’t make! If only the Augments weren’t so…so… insipid! Of course, I can buy other recipes, and some of them even look reasonably useful, but the two girls will have to do a lot of manufacturing runs (which I’m not really looking forward to!) to earn the Artisan Marks they’re going to need to purchase said recipes! Oh well, say la vee, as the French say 🙂 Now, having done all that work in Rift today, I’m left with all the junk weapons she had to make to earn her brownie points! I’ve disassembled half of them, but now the other half have to be Auctioned off. It’ll take forever to put them all up, and there are so many of them (grizzle, grizzle) 😦 But it has to be done, if we’re to refill the coffers of the Guild Bank – and we were starting to, too – but we’d just barely managed to get our noses over the 1000 platinum mark, and I had to “borrow” 400 platinum to finish that training today… However, I can happily say that I’ve now got girls up to the level of “Savant” in every single Artisan Skill! The Fishing and Survival skill set I’m not interested in – they’re mainly for people who like to run large (read: 20 person) raids, and need someone to provide booster food and “rest time” without having to go back to base camp, for the party. The Gathering skills, Foraging, Mining and Butchering, all get leveled up with the girls, as they go questing – you can’t go into higher level areas to pick herbs, mine ore, and collect animal hides, because even if you did manage not to get killed, you wouldn’t be able to pick them up. So, no more raids on the Guild Bank, I hope – not even to gear people up, because I can make all those sorts of things now!

So that was my day – as I said, it was quite an interesting one! 🙂 Except for…

Weigh-in this morning. That was not “interesting”, it was horrible! I stayed the same… 107.8kg… for the fourth day in a row!! I swear, if I stay the same again tomorrow, I won’t weigh myself for a whole month! (Well, I will, but I won’t want to! 😦 ) Why is this happening to me? Have I plateau’d out? Should I eat something fattening, just to break this wretched cycle? I’m really most distressed about it all 😦 Honestly, if I don’t move up or down (preferably down!) tomorrow, I’ll cry…

So tune in again tomorrow night and find out all the latest! Have Rift decided to introduce another Crafting skill? Will I need to raid the Guild Bank one more time in order to create another Savant Crafter? And what about my beautiful new nail polishes? Will I be able to resist the temptation to remove this pretty purple early, and try out one of the new ones? And if so, which one will it be? The luscious, fiery red, to match my hair? Or the sumptuous, opulent peacock blue, just because it looks so fabulous (in the bottle, anyway!)? What about my weight? Well, if you happen to hear a Banshee-like mournful wailing and sobbing noise, around 8.00am-ish, you’ll know that the weigh-in hasn’t gone well, and I’ve gone up… If, on the other hand, you hear an earth shattering “kaboom”, you’ll know that I stayed the same and have blown myself, and the stupid scales, to kingdom come… and If, on the third hand, you don’t hear anything at all, well… you’ll just have to wait for me to tell you, tomorrow night! 🙂 Until then, stay well – ciao, all! 🙂

My wonderful new Chrome Violet nail polish, by Estee Lauder… It didn’t even last the night! Last night when I went to bed, it was perfect! Smooth, shiny, absolutely gorgeous colour… When I got up this morning most of the polish was chipped and ragged – anyone would think I’d spent the night digging to China with my bare hands, or something! Which, I hasten to assure you, I wasn’t! Didn’t… er… I wasn’t there, nobody saw me do it, I was asleep! So it was with great sadness that I sat down this afternoon with the bottle of nail polish remover, and twice the number of cotton wool balls than I normally use when I’m removing nail polish. The damn stuff didn’t want to come off! Oh, it was perfectly happy to chip and flake off, but it stubbornly refused to budge from around the sides of my nails and my cuticles – what’s more, what did soak off into the cotton wool balls, also got underneath the tips of my nails, and decided that it liked its new home so much that I actually had to pour a little of the remover between the tip of my nail and my finger to get rid of it! Eventually I managed to get it mostly off, then I just scrubbed hard with the warm water, soap, and the nail brush. Once my hands were clean, dry, and somewhat recovered from this harsh treatment, I re-did my nails using the pretty purple Inglot “breathable” polish – it’s the only one, out of six different nail polishes that I’ve bought over the past few months, that’s lasted the full week, and still looked as good as the day I applied it, after a week! (blows raspberry at screen) So there, Mr. Revlon, and Mme. Lauder! I’m going back to Inglot! Apart from my disappointment with the extremely pretty Chrome Violet nail polish, I spent a very enjoyable morning getting my hair done and chatting with Josh – then it was back to my work on that “Gear Stats Comparison Chart” wot I was talking about last night (it’s so that I can scribble in values that I can check against possible replacement gear that I can make) I think I got all the values listed that I need – I’m just checking with himself – yes, he says I have all the values listed, but he’d also like to see Maces and Shields added to the weapons list. He quite often plays a Cleric, and they wear Chain Mail (which Jademoss can make!) and can use Shields and Maces. Well, I can make the Shields alright, but I’ll have to train someone else up in Weaponsmithing to get the Mace-making capabilities (or buy Jademoss an extra Skill slot… hmmmm… decisions, decisions… Then there really won’t be anything my girls can’t make! 🙂 ) However, I do foresee a great disturbance in the Guild Bank! As though a thousand pieces of platinum all cried out at once, and were silenced… (with apologies to George Lucas!) Well, so much for getting back into Dimensioning! It’ll have to wait until I become a Savant Weaponsmith (which isn’t that hard to do, really – you can do it in a day, with the skill enhancers… and enough platinum!)

I have my Warfarin blood test tomorrow morning – no big deal – I might even be able to pop into Inglot and Priceline, if I’m quick about it, because then Flipper (the fluffy cat) has an appointment with the Vet for her next cartrophen injection (which she has about every six weeks or so for her arthritis) and a full check up (she’s 20 years old, so she gets checked very regularly) She’s going to hate us 😦 She hates going to the Vet, and her language, when she sees the cat carry box, could just about turn the air blue! Still, she forgives us quickly enough once she gets home again, and she’ll be bringing home a nice, new bag of her favourite pussy biscuits (special “large” pieces of kibble, designed to make cats chew hard, to get the tartar off their teeth and exercise their gums – she loves them!) Hopefully, when we get home from all of that himself will be able to finally finish off his cleaning out of the spare room – he’s actually managed to get into the last corner! Then it’ll all have to be cleaned. All the books will have to come out of the bookcase, the bookcase will need to be dusted and polished, the books will all need to be dusted and put back, the floor and skirting boards dusted, vacuumed and mopped, and the picture frames and glass dusted and cleaned… Then, and only then, can we go shopping for the elusive comfy sofa bed and all the trappings of a nicely decorated and pleasant spare room 🙂

Weigh-in this morning… No, I don’t want to talk about it! Oh, I have to, don’t I. That’s the whole point of this blog, to track my weight loss progress. Unfortunately, this morning, there was no progress! I stayed the same – again! 107.8kg I’ve probably plateau’d out 😦 I’ve almost forgotten what going down is like…Woe is me (have I laid it on thickly enough yet? Could I please have a bucket of lime jelly and a trowel? Ta…) Oh well, let’s see what tomorrow brings…

Anyway, call back tomorrow night – maybe I’ll have bought some new nail polish from Inglot – that’ll be sure to cheer me up – and I can tell you if the spare room is habitable again or not, and if not, why not, and a progress report and estimated time of habitability! There’ll also be a report on Flipper’s health and well being, and also, if there is anything to report, my weight status – and this time, it had better be good, or I may have to resort to taking the sledge hammer to the scales – either that, or get them a new battery! (I’m sure the scales must be wrong! Three days at the same weight? Can’t possibly be right…the scales did waver down to 96.something kg before wafting back up to 107.8kg – yes, I’m sure they’re wrong…) I guess we’ll find out tomorrow, eh? Until then, bee good, and stay safe – ciao, all! 🙂

This turned out to be. We slept in, as we usually do on a Sunday (ahhh… typing is much more easier now that I’ve filed my nails down!) We slept in until 8.00am, as we usually do on a Sunday, and that was where the usual parted company from the reality. After breakfast, himself repaired to the spare room, and I… entered Telara, on my own. It felt quite eerie! Nah, not really, it was more like just an ordinary week day. Checked the auctions, checked my Minions, smelted the ore, cured the hides, did the banking – all the usual mundane housekeeping chores – you know, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Then it was a toss up as to whether I’d take one of my girls questing, or whether I’d start doing some serious Dimension building. The questing won, but next time I’ll be getting back in to Dimensions again – I’ve been far too long away from it, and I can’t remember when the next Dimension competition is due. There are some fairly cool prizes – special mounts, gear… new and unique Dimension keys and items. The first time I entered, two years ago, I got quite a few votes, but I was pretty much a Dimension novice back then – I’ve learned a lot since, and I think I might even stand a chance this year, depending on the specified theme (I didn’t bother entering last year – the theme was “Best Pool Party Venue”, and I’m not really big on parties, or party venues!) So I’d best get started, just in case. If I do enter, I hope you’ll all come along, have a look at my Dimension, and vote for me! But as I said – it depends on the competition theme… So anyway, I took Waterblaze up to Stonefield, and got her up to level 23… but I had other chores to do after lunch, so I left her there. I also decided to make up an “equipment sheet”. I was thinking of upgrading Waterblaze’s armor and gear, and really, why spend more Guild Bank money on stuff that Jademoss and Wyntercat can make for her, gratis? The trouble is, at the moment I have no way to compare her current clothing with what I could make – that is, would it be better than what she already has, or not? Usually, when you go to the Auction house looking for a weapon or gear, all you have to do is hover your mouse over the item for sale, and you’ll immediately get two comparison boxes, one showing the currently equipped item, and the other showing the item being considered. The box showing the item being considered will show you all the stats for that item – Armor (where applicable), Intelligence, Wisdom, etc. The box showing your equipped item will show you any improvements (in green) or deteriorations (in red) that will occur if you were to equip that item instead of the one you’re currently using. So, I thought, I could mock up a printable list showing all of the needed attributes, but leaving the actual values blank. That way, when I wanted to see what I could make, I’d just have to scribble in the current values, log into my Outfitter (Jademoss) and compare what my “needy” characted already had, with what Jademoss could make, and what I’d need to add to it in Augments and/or Runes to make it even better. Ditto with Wyntercat and the weapons she could provide. Once I got the list looking nice and neat (read: “in pretty text and colours”) I could print out half a dozen or so, and I’d have an instant guide to what I needed to make – all I’d have to do would be to scribble in (and believe me, my hand writing has deteriorated to an almost illegible scrawl these days!) the current stat values.

I had other “duties” after lunch – I folded and put away the washing. Then I started work on my nails… removing the old nail polish, filing and shaping, washing and scrubbing them… (note to self: see if I can find out why my nails are so dry that they’re actually on the point of splitting vertically, and what I can do to correct this problem) Then, in a state of great excitement, I settled myself down to try out my new Chrome Violet nail polish. I have to say, I’ve never used a nail polish quite like it! It’s not thick, exactly, it’s reasonably runny… but it dries terribly quickly. When you’re painting your nails, you usually dip the brush in the polish, drag off the excess against the inside of the neck of the bottle, apply one stroke down the middle of the nail, apply a second stroke down one side of your nail, next to, and just slightly overlapping the central one, and then repeat the process on the other side of the central one, re-dipping and dragging off the excess as needed. With this nail polish, I found that the first, central stroke was almost completely dry before I made the second stroke – what’s more, I found that the brush “ran out” of polish and really needed to be re-dipped half way through a stroke, and where the new full brush of polish joined up with where it had run out, well, it made a sort of a lumpy mess, and brush stroke marks, a lot like that lumpy old fashioned house paint around windows, that’s so thick that you can still see the brush streaks? I was quite trepidated, and was thinking that I might have to start over… But no! It dried almost instantly, and it smoothed out as it dried, so apart from where I managed to get it all over my cuticles (*rolls eyes* I’m getting very clumsy in my old age!) it looks great! Kudos to Estee Lauder for making a nail polish that dries before you get a chance to smudge it! 🙂 I was really pleased with it! And thank you too, to my favourite eldest daughter and her husband for giving it to me for Christmas, even though I had to buy it myself from Estee Lauder, and buy our new towels with the David Jones voucher that you game me for the nail polish! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was boring (“stay the same = boring”, remember?) I stayed the same, at 107.8kg. Very tiresome! And annoying. Every time I stay the same, especially for more than just a day, I start to panic that I’ve plateau’d out, and that that’s it – I won’t lose any more weight (hey! It’s happened to me before, many, many years ago – I lost a lot of weight, and plateau’d out for about three months!)  Hopefully I’ll re-start my downwards march tomorrow… *sigh* Sometimes I think I’d rather go up a point or two (but no more than that!) rather than stay the same…

So there it is – my non-Sunday Sunday… Tune in again tomorrow night and find out if… my new nail polish lasted the night… if the spare room got finished so that we can go looking for comfy sofa beds and other assorted furniture for the “new spare room” – will my weight have gone up? down? or plateau’d out (heaven forbid!) These questions and more will be answered, right here, this time tomorrow night. I look forward to seeing you all back here then – ciao, all! 🙂

Turn out, quite as expected today! We’d planned – or rather, I’d planned on trotting around looking at entertainment units, and nice (read: “pretty”) storage boxes in which to store things under the bed… However, going through the wardrobe in here yesterday had a very strange effect on himself’s brain! He decided to start reclaiming the spare room, and to do that he first had to empty out, and clean, the rest of the computer cupboard (read: the wardrobe we cleared the clothes out of yesterday) That endeavour took most of the morning, and did I say yesterday that I’d never realised we had so many clothes? I did, didn’t I… and I also didn’t realise – and neither did he – just how many spare keyboards… monitors… computers and computer cases… that we had! Not to mention all the spare routers and other computerie bits and pieces, languishing there at the back of the top shelf. We could almost have opened up a second hand computer shop! He cleaned them up, took photos, and offered them, free to a good home, on his favourite forum, Overclockers. If anyone reading this blog is looking to adopt various computer bits and pieces, stick your hand up by leaving a comment, telling us what you’re looking to adopt, and your contact details, and we’ll get back to you. Anyway, by the time all of that had been done it was after lunch, and himself started getting stuck into the spare room. Things that we were going to keep got stored in big plastic bins with lids, and stacked into the newly cleaned and emptied computer cupboard; the things we weren’t going to keep got stored in big plastic rubbish bags and stacked by the front door. These will be carted off to the tip tomorrow. Tomorrow. Traditionally our day for romping gaily through Telara… This time, we’ve decided to have our Sunday on Tuesday instead, so that himself can keep on with the cleanup and not lose momentum. You know, I can see the spare room as in a vision… look! There’s actually a floor in there! Tiled, too, like the rest of the house. A chest of drawers stands against the wall to your left as you enter the room, and a large bookshelf full of those quaint old fashioned cardboard, leather, and paper objects called “books” stands against the window wall. Two beautiful Michael Parkes prints decorate the wall facing the door, and under the prints is a comfortable looking sofa bed with a fluffy throw rug and colourful scatter cushions. There are side tables at each end of the sofa, with Tiffany lamps, which make the room glow with a warm golden light in the evenings. A woven oval rug lies on the floor in the middle of the room, and a round, carved, Chinese coffee table completes the room…. As I said… a vision! A vision of what the room could look like, if we ever get a round tuit. Well, at least it’s almost half emptied out now, so hopefully the rest can be done tomorrow… then, as well as going out and looking for a new entertainment unit, and nice (read: “pretty”) storage boxes, we can also look for a comfy looking sofa bed, a fluffy throw rug, and some colourful scatter cushions! 🙂 Then all we’ll have to get is the oval rug, the side tables, and the Tiffany lamps. *sigh* I suppose it’ll get finished one day…

Whilst all of that was going on, I was blissfully unaware, leveling up Wyntercat’s Runecrafting and Artificing skills. I managed to get her Alchemy crafting up to maximum yesterday, and today I also got her Runecrafting (magical gems which can be added to your gear and armor to boost up your attributes, like Intelligence, Wisdom, Endurance, Strength, etc., sometimes by as much as +110!) up to maximum (450/450) I did her Artificing last – I’ve found it a bit disappointing, actually, because Artificing is the art of making magical weapons – Staves, bows, wands, totems, etc. You can also make “Augments” for those items, they’re a little bit like Runes (see above), but are incorporated into the actual fabric of the item you’re making… what I found so disappointing was that there are virtually no Augments that are of terribly much use to Mages. There are a few that would suite a Cleric, or a Rogue, but not much for Mages, and just about all my girls are Mages. As I said. Disappointing. So anyway, by the time I’d taken care of my Merry Minions, and then upped Wyntercat’s last two crafts, it was late(ish) afternoon, and too late to start any serious questing. Unfortunately, the poor old Guild bank isn’t looking too healthy. There was almost 5000 platinum in its coffers before Jademoss and Dramiel turned 65 and we upgraded all their gear, and then I maxed out Jademoss’s two crafts, and Wyntercat’s three… and now there’s only about 887 platinum left! It’s not as easy as it once was to make money on Rift – before Minions came on the scene, if you needed a lot of money fast, you went out and farmed whatever was doing well on the Auction House. Skins, herbs, metal – it all sold well, especially the higher level gatherables… Now, your Minions bring in most of the high level stuff that once you had to go out and farm to make money, and they bring in a lot of it! What’s more, everyone of a certain level has Minions, and all the Minions go on the same Adventures, and they all bring in the same items – more or less – and so what happens when there’s a glut?! The prices go down! and it’s not good for the Telaran economy! Oh, we’ll eventually make the money back – if we farm hard, and Jademoss and Wyntercat turn the fruits of our farming labours into sellable items – gear, weapons, whatever – maybe we can sell the finished product for a profit (except that everyone else will be doing the same thing – catch 22!)

Weigh-in this morning was “bad” (as in “up = bad”, “down = good”, “stay the same = boring”) I knew it had to happen – soon – and it did, this morning. I went up 1 point, from 107.7kg to 107.8kg. I’m not going to grizzle too much about it, I’ve been expecting it, and it was only one point, but if it does it again, let me just say that I’ll not be best pleased… Let’s see what happens tomorrow morning, before deciding on severe reactions… 😉

So call in again tomorrow night, and find out how I amused myself in Telara on my own, whilst himself amused himself cleaning out the spare room 😉 Hopefully by Wednesday we’ll be ready to go sofa bed shopping (I noticed that they has some quite nice ones in Hardly Normal when we were getting my new computer chair!) as well as all the other items on my nice, long shopping list! 🙂 I’ll let you know what my new Chrome Violet nail polish looks like on actual nails, and not just in the bottle, and fill you in on what my weight is doing… which will be going down again, hopefully! Anyway, bee good, and bee-have yourselves until tomorrow – ciao, all! 🙂