A teacher. I did try, but I’m not very good at it. Never mind, I think that between the two of us, Julian and I managed to get at least a few of the main principles and strategies of playing Rift instilled into our friend. He certainly worked hard at it and improved immensely by the time we finished. We had a few networking problems at first, which held us up a bit, but we got there in the end, which I suppose is the main thing. I also learnt a few interesting things about Rift! For instance, I found out that characters under level 10 can’t participate in World Events! In this case it was the Yule Celebrations… Seems a bit weird, and a lot silly, to me, but there it is. You have to have dinged 10 to be able to get the Daily Quests (read: “chores”!) I got my new girl Watersong (you remember her – I told you all about her last night!) up to level 10 this evening, but I doubt that I’ll get much of a chance to do much tomorrow as we’re off on a great spending spree 🙂 I want to look for my nail polish at David Jones, and if they haven’t got it, and won’t be getting it in, I’ll want to know what the [* * *] they need with a sample bottle, or “Tester”?! and that they should sell that to me – at half price, because it’ll be “used”! Well, I think that sounds perfectly logical, don’t you? What do you need with a “tester” product, if you’re not going to be selling the very product that you’re allowing people to “test“? (Old (somewhat mangled) computer proverb: “Never test for a product that you’re never going to handle” 😉 )

I also need to get some more Jurlique Jasmine Body Lotion (I’m all but out!), and I want to go back to Inglot – I’ve looked at their nail polish colour chart(s) and have written down all the numbers that look “nice” on screen – it remains to be seen if they look “nice” in the real world. I’d like to stop off at OfficeWorks to look at their computer chairs, too – I was “given” a new computer chair the Christmas before last, but it didn’t (*blush*) “fit” me, so I’m still using the old one – so I sort of feel that I’m “owed” a new computer chair. I’d like to go and see what fits me now that I’ve lost a reasonable amount of weight (25kg) After all, I can now fit into one of those ghastly chairs that they make you sit in when you’re having blood tests done, without getting bruises on the sides of my thighs… so I figure I should be able to sit, reasonably comfortably, in a standard computer chair… And… I want to go shopping for new towels – I’d like to throw out all our old ones (most of which belonged to my mother, and she passed away in 2007!) and get some nice new ones… I also want to get some *whispers* new eyeshadow – I have blues, and I have greens, but I think I’d like to try a sort of “heather”/lavender/mauve set *stops whispering* What on earth am I whispering for! This is the year of the new me! If I want to wear lavender eyeshadow, I jolly well will! (*nods firmly at screen*) Oh, and I almost forgot – I have to pick up another couple of T-shirts from My Size – black ones, because I wear a lot of black… and guess what? They have them in *lavender*, too now! Wanna bet they’ll either have none of the lavender ones in stock, or they won’t have them in my size! (despite the name of the shop! 😉 ) Of course, most of those things will depend on the weather – I’m totally allergic to hot weather, even when I’m indoors, reclining in air conditioned splendour, so we’ll travel slowly… some – one or two, maybe – of those things may have to wait until next week, when it’s cooler… I guess it just depends on how desperate I am to get some more of that Body Lotion 😉

Weigh-in this morning was a bit better – I went down a smidge, to 109.3kg Only one point, but a lot better than going up! I am having, even as I write, a glass of that diet cordial I’ve been talking about – Bickfords Lemon, Lime & Bitters, and it’s very nice! If it doesn’t make me put on any weight I shall be most pleased to recommend it to you all! However, let’s just wait and see what my weight does first, hmm? 🙂

So that’s it from me tonight – drop in again tomorrow night and see what goodies I’ve managed to come home with, if any, depending on the weather – and whether or not I managed to get my favourite Body Lotion, a lavender T-shirt, and mauve toned eyeshadow… and a chair… 😉 And if you’re lucky, you might even find out if I lost any more weight, or whether the cordial is fattening, after all! 😉 Until then, ciao all! 🙂

Looks great! It does make you blink a little bit, because it’s so different – well, different to what I’ve had for… ummm… about 10 years now? It’s now more the way it looked when I was running the Bulletin Board – only very short instead of long, and with pretty pale streaks in it. It’s back to the good old days of “Ave, Ginger” and “death… by chocolate… (but what a way to go!)”, for anyone else who can remember that far back 😉 So Bravo, Josh, you did a great job, and I love it! 🙂 Thank you! 🙂

So after that exhausting and nerve wracking experience 😉 I went off to do a bit of Rifting, and to celebrate, I…. er… created a new character. INTERMISSION I just had to be rescued from a spider – oh, the horror of it! It ran down the side of my shelves, across my tissue box, and underneath my notebook wot I keep next to me for writing important things down in, like RGB colours (e.g. 224, 239, 251 – that’s very pale blue to you non graphical peoples), and names for new characters, and appointment dates and times, and things like that. Naturally I squawked loudly in terror – Julian has become so good at interpreting my “it’s a spider!” squawks that he knows it’s a matter of life and death (his death, if he doesn’t rescue me quickly enough!) and he came to rescue me. Greatly daring, and very bravely, he grabbed a tissue and squished it, saving me from its ghastly, poisonously murderous .5 millimeter long fangs! Hurrah! I survive another night! Thank you, Sir Julian, oh knight in shining armor! 🙂 END INTERMISSION Now… where was I, when I was so viciously attacked by the evil spider lord? Oh yes, creating a new character… Her name is Watersong, and she’s a Kelari (one of the Defiant races). She’s an Elementalist/Necromancer (so I’ll still get “Feign Death”!), and Pyromentalist. Most points will go into Elemantalist and Necromancer, but hopefully she should prove to be quite a strong build. So I played with her for a while, then went on to experiment with blue “gems” which didn’t really go so well, and at about 4.30 this afternoon I went off to read.

Tomorrow should be a fun day – we’re helping a friend learn the in’s and out’s of Rift – I’m not quite sure how we’re going to set things up – I’ll probably use one of my “younger” girls, and Mentor down, and Julian will either do the same, or ride shotgun for us. I think I said once before that Rift is completely different from World of Warcraft, but still very similar in some respects? Especially in regards to covering vast distances quickly. In World of Warcraft they were called “Way Points”, in Rift they’re called “Porticulums”, and basically they transport you from one “Way Point”, or “Porticulum” to another, instantly. It used to be one of my self appointed missions in Warcraft to set out at a very early level (like about level 4!) and run around the entire map, collecting Way Points. The only trouble was, there were all sorts of nasties that had an uncanny knack of homing in on innocent young runners, and you’d barely run a yard from your starting point, and you’d be unmercifully killed, and end up back in the closest Graveyard to where you started running from. So, your ghost would run back to where your body was, jump back into it (ah! the wonders of Fantasy! 🙂 ) you’d hope to goodness that the nasties had gone away, and keep on running – until you got killed again. Rinse and repeat until you reached the next Way Point, etc. There was always an Angel of Death in the Graveyard who could resurrect you if you wanted, but you had to pay in temporary health points… on one of my shelves I have a wonderful photo-printout of the Graveyard Angel saying “Oh, it’s you again…” – that was just soooo me! 🙂 Anyway, when the going got really tough, in high level areas, like when I wanted to tame a particular type of pet, Julian would ride shotgun for me and mow down the nasties before they could kill me. I got a few good pets that way – foxes, in particular. So, while that sort of thing isn’t necessary in Rift, it is sometimes a good idea to have a high(er) level character “escort” you from place to place. I suspect a bit of that will be going on tomorrow, but I’m really looking forward to it. With luck we might even be able to group up of an evening and have a bit of a bash – soloing can be a fairly boring way of playing, sometimes… Then the day after tomorrow, just when it’ll be getting horribly hot again, I have to go and pick up a repeat script, so we’ll be calling in at The Glen to do some shopping on the way home. I hope I don’t melt…

Weigh-in this morning was sadly predictable – I stayed the same, at 109.4kg Well, at least I didn’t go up (though I probably will tomorrow!) Ah well, I’m half way through my “fluid retaining” medication (it’s not really, but unfortunately that is one of its side effects!), so only another 5 days before I’ll hopefully start losing weight a bit more seriously again. Once again, I’m running to a Time Table! Only 23 days left to lose as much as I possibly can…

So look in again tomorrow night to see how our “Telara 101” day went, and if we’re going to have more such days… I’ll probably be very daring and try the diet cordial tomorrow, too, so I’ll be able to tell you if it tastes any good or not… and, of course, whether my weight went up, stayed the same, or went down… See y’all then! ciao! 🙂

Didn’t come down, after all. We sort of ran out of time, by the time we’d dusted down from our day in Telara, and I’d done my nails again – pretty colour, but dreadful polish this time, horrible! I fear that Revlon have proven, once again, that they’re just riding on their name, and their past reputation… I remember way back when, Revlon was probably one of the very best names in cosmetics – now, well… they sell the brand in Priceline, don’t they! Enough said! And no, I’m not a snob (well, I am a bit, maybe), but I do expect value for money. In this case, I didn’t get what I thought I’d paid for. The polish was thick and gluggy, and didn’t go on at all evenly. I had to blob it on in places, and carefully brush excess off in others. I put two coats on (believe me, it needed two coats!), and finished around a quarter to six. It’s now quarter to eleven, and I don’t think it’s dried properly yet (though it’s starting to feel a bit harder – thank heavens!) It is a pretty colour though, it’s another “darker than I’m used to” pearl-ish blue, but the biggest giggle is that the Inglot pearl-ish purple I used last week matched my T-shirt, and this pearl-ish blue matches the lounge suite! 😀 Out of all the nail polishes I’ve used in the last month or so, the Inglot “breathable” nail polish (the pearl-ish purple one) is by far the best quality and the longest wearing. Usually after a week my nail polish is starting to chip off at the edges and looks decidedly ragged and patchy. I took the Inglot one off today, and it still looked as good as when I first applied it! I’ll definitely be going back there to see what other colours they’ve got…

So the Christmas Tree will have to come down tomorrow afternoon. Anyway, today was Sunday, so off we traipsed to our most favourite spot in all of Telara (NOT!), the Tarken Glacier. At least this time we didn’t have to go anywhere that had serious blizzards – just serious swirling snow mini tornadoes, which kept knocking us off our mounts. Not good, when you’re being pursued by a pack of ravening wolf-type creatures! We do have an unusual problem though. On foot, himself runs a lot faster than I do, and I keep getting left behind. Mounted, we have the opposite problem. I have certain “buffs” (enhancements) that make my riding speed a lot faster than his. As he (usually) leads the way, I have to keep stopping every couple of yards, so that he can get ahead again. It also means that I can’t stop quickly enough to prevent myself from plummeting gaily over the edge of a cliff – which I did several times today, and we had to go all the way back to where we started climbing up the mountain, and do it all over again to get back to where we had to be – and there’s not a thing I can do about it. I also don’t jump out of water very well – I keep getting stuck under ice floes and/or ramps… he usually has to rescue me, and jump me out, whilst I sit and glower from the sidelines. Anyway, he died a couple of times – I didn’t! 😛 (aside: some horrible little insect has bitten me on the face, and it’s as itchy as all get out! If I ever catch the little [naughty word], I’ll… I’ll… boil it in oil, and then jump up and down on it!) We both figure that we’ll ding 65 next Sunday – I have two and a quarter bubbles to go, he has two and a half… so we should get there next week. Mind you, we still have a fair amount of territory to cover before we exhaust the area – not that that has anything to do with leveling up – it just means that we’ll be doing it at the highest level, instead of as puny little level 64’s! 🙂 We still haven’t decided what we’re going to do when we’ve reached level 65 and completed all the areas – personally, I favour starting off a couple of newbies – maybe different races? Different builds? I shall miss having “Feign Death”, if we do that – it’s basically “Playing Possum” – you make a sort of strangled screaming sound, and fall over, apparently dead. The mobs attacking you think “Oh, she’d dead! No threat detected” and go away. You then get up and start shooting at them again… Rinse and repeat until all hostile mobs are deceased 🙂 Unfortunately, only Necromancers have that ability, so if I use a different build I might have to learn to live without it! 😉

Weigh-in this morning was good again (all these “good” weigh-ins are starting to make me a little nervous…) I went down two points, from 109.6kg yesterday to 109.4kg today. However, I did have my Panettone for breakfast this morning (but I haven’t had any of the diet cordial yet!), so we shall see what we shall see tomorrow morning. It would be really, really nice, if it went down again, but I’m not going to hold my breath! 😉

So tune in again tomorrow night! Find out if the Panettone for breakfast caused a catastrophe, or whether I went down or stayed the same… See if my gluggy nail polish has lasted the night, and if I’ve had any of the cordial yet (and if so, what it’s like, and whether or not I like it!) Oh, and I’m having my hair colour done again tomorrow, and it’s going to be slightly more “radical” than usual, so I’ll let you know if himself takes one horrified look and faints, or not 😉 Until then, ciao all! 🙂

Trying out this new Logitech keyboard I’ve been “loaned”… will it do what the other one did, and be one key “out” for my hand span? Tonight’s blog (umm.. “Page Down” was where I was expecting to find “End” – woops! Guess I’m not used to this keyboard layout yet!) Tonight’s blog will be the acid test! So far, no typos due to peculiar alphabetical key layout, anyway (lots of other mistakes though – look at the keyboard, Winter, don’t just go from memory!)

Well, it sure was hot today – but not in here (*smug smile*)! (Damn! I did it again! Hit “Page Down” instead of “End” – they’re right next to each other – most confusing to a bear(er) of very little brain!) It was just a pleasantly cool day in here, so I made the most of it by Rifting fairly solidly from breakfast until lunchtime. I was working on a new girl on the shard Greybriar, and fully intended on shuffling her over once I got her to level 15, so I went looking to see who I could transfer to make room for her. Arrgggh! I’ve managed to get to the stage where I can’t transfer anyone! They either have too much Dimensional territory to be moved easily, or I like them too much to want them to go… In the end I had to grit my teeth, abandon the new girl on Greybriar (don’t worry, I will go back to her later on, she’s not totally abandoned!), purchase some more Credits, and re-name the girl I had planned to transfer – until I realised that she had one of the largest Dimensions, completely stuffed to the gunnels with spare Dimension items that I want to keep on Laethys Oh well. She’s now called “Zorcha”. Later on, when I can afford it, I might change her race to Mathosian, or something… I also decided to use some of those handy-dandy Transcendent experience boosters that I found in all the mail boxes a week or so ago, and boy, are they worth using! I was levelling up reasonably quickly, or so I thought – about a level and a half a day – but this afternoon I went up three levels in about an hour and a half! The pity is, I only have seven of them left! 😦 I don’t know whether to save them up for ‘ron, when the going gets slower, or use ’em now… Hmmm… if I use them now, and go up as quickly as I can, it means that the higher I go, the slower I’ll go up levels – boring! On the other hand, if I go up quickly now, I’ll be high enough when I get to the harder areas that the mobs there won’t be too hard to kill! Points on both sides, I guess… Ah, decisions, decisions… it’s a tough life, playing Rift, but I guess somebody’s got to do it! 😉

After lunch I did have a bit of a bash at those new graphics I’m working on, and I did save as I worked, but the same filter crashed Photoshop again, so I thought naughty words and went back to Rift. However, I did get the ruby gems sized properly (50%, 45%, 35% and 25% of the original) and saved, so that’s something. I even managed to save it in a sort of an aquamarine colour too – I think! It’s a funny thing, you know – as I said before, it was lovely and cool in here all day today, but the atmospheric/barometric (??) pressure still affects you – well, it still affects me, anyway, but that might just be because I’m a bit weird like that. Anyway, despite being quite cool and comfortable, the hotter it got outside, the slower and more lethargic I got in the coolth! Very strange! Has anyone else reading this ever experienced that sort of thing, or is it just me? Do tell, I’d love to know! 🙂

I had a great idea for a science fiction story/movie/series whatever this morning… We watched a couple of “Star Trek Enterprise” episodes last night, and at one stage the ship’s doctor was able to tell, with his little tri-corder or whatever it was, that a woman was the mother of [one of the other people there] Now I thought, that if (in my story idea) we now started recording the DNA sequence of every single child born from now on, in a couple of centuries we’d probably have a big enough data base to be able to identify any human we came across, anywhere – you with me so far? And then… (gasp, shock, horror!) we came across a human that we couldn’t identify! They have the same sort of genetic makeup as humans, but their genetic makeup doesn’t match anything at all in the centuries old data base, and this is simply not possible – we all link to our parent’s DNA in some way. So, who, or what, is this person? Is this person even human? And if they’re not, but all their organs are human, and psychologically and emotionally they behave like humans, what then have we got? I think there’s probably enough material in that short premise for at least several seasons of good science fiction mystery! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was interesting… I went down one more point, to 109.6kg And tomorrow morning I’m having Panettone for breakfast again. So far (so far!) it doesn’t seem to be affecting the way my weight is behaving, so maybe if I have that every third morning (until it’s all eaten, anyway) I’ll be OK… I hope so… (ahhh! some more of that nice, yummy tea is asking me to drink it – I shall comply! It really is very nice!) We bought some low calorie/diet cordial the other day, but so far I haven’t been game to try it – it has about 5 calories per glass – that’s 21 kilojoules… maybe if I just have a small glass it’ll be alright… But I won’t try it tomorrow, as I’ll be having the Panettone…

Anyway, look in again tomorrow night to find out if I ate the Panettone… and did I try the cordial as well, or did I chicken out… and have those tablets made me retain enough fluid to make my weight go up?! These questions, and lots more that you haven’t even thought to ask yet, will be answered – right here, this time tomorrow night! ciao all! 🙂

The weather, that is… but that’s what I used to say to my grandmother – my mother’s mother – when we were staying at their place and she’d dish up a delicious, home made rhubarb pie, hot from the oven. As a small child, of course I couldn’t wait to start shovelling it into my mouth, which, and although warned by all the adults present, I promptly burnt on the hot filling (now you know why the McDonald’s Hot Apple Pies have the words “Warning! Filling may be hot!” printed on the packet!) With a mouth full of scalding hot pie, I’d yowl “Hot, Nonnie!”, and there’d be a few tears until some cold milk or cream was poured onto the pie to cool it down a bit. As for the “Nonnie” bit, well, there were several reasons for that, the first being that I also had an Italian grandmother, my father’s mother, whom I called “grandmother” – in Italian – “Nonna”, but it was deemed that I couldn’t have two Nonna’s because that might confuse me (*rolls eyes* – I wish there was a WordPress emoticon to express this! I think I’d use it a lot ) Besides, my “Nonnie” considered herself far too young to be a grandmother, and wouldn’t have a bar of “Gran”, or “Nan”, or anything else that smacked of grandmothers, so the word “Nonnie”, a corruption of the word “Nonna”, was adopted as a “workable compromise”. So… the wretched hot weather has started 😦 Not nice… not nice at all! You know, we were watching the news tonight, and they had a reporter talking to people down at the beach, and almost without exception they all said how blistering hot it was… if they were so damned hot (two of them were red faced and sweating, huddled under what looked like a two man pup tent in the blazing sun, for goodness sake!), why were they down at the beach at all? Why weren’t they sitting in comparative comfort at home with the air conditioner on full blast, or if they didn’t have an air conditioner, at least a fan going full pelt with a bowl full of ice cubes in front of it? Mad, I tell you, mad! The lot of them!

Well, I stayed home, cowering under the air conditioner and happily playing Rift (again… still….) Himself had to go out though, as we hadn’t been out to get any supplies in since before Christmas, and the larder was looking alarmingly empty and devoid of food stuffs. Still, he was going from air conditioned car to air conditioned buildings, so he didn’t fare too badly. (this is an exceptionally nice cup of tea that himself has just brought me – I must ask him what it is – it’s not the same as we had this afternoon… yummm!) He also picked up some Resident’s Parking permits from our local Council – there’s a new building going up just across the street and the workmen who’re constructing it park in our “Visitors” spots, and stay there all day. Apparently someone alerts them when a Parking Inspector is due to make his (or her) rounds, and they all scramble to swap spots and move their cars before they can get booked. So each of the Bodies Corporate (there are three buildings involved, so three Bodies Corporate) sent a rep to the local Council and managed to talk them into issuing Resident’s Parking permits, for residents to give to their guests. Any car not displaying one of these permits will get booked. We also have a spare parking spot in the underground garage, so anyone coming to see us and wanting to keep their car out of the sun can make use of that – when both Lisa and Kate are coming over it’s usually a race to see who gets here first, Lisa and Neale, or Kate and Terry, ‘coz if we can’t “borrow” another car spot from one of the other residents, the first couple here get our spare parking place, and the loser parks outside 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was… encouraging… down to 109.7kg. Two points down. I don’t think it’s down quite enough to keep me out of the 110kg zone when my body gets the message “Quick! Store all possible fluids! You’re a camel!” from these wretched pills I have to take – still, let’s see what happens tomorrow… Hopefully I’ll go down another one or two points, before the upwards surge…

Do try to stay cool, and tune in again tomorrow night to find out if the “differently laid out” Logitech keyboard that is sitting currently uninstalled next to me fits my hand span better than this one doesn’t (this is a Logitech too) …and whether I’ve started growing a hump on my back or not… ciao, all! 🙂

2015… Scary! 🙂 Well, it’s here now, and there’s nothing we can do about it except make the most of it – or do the best we can with it – whichever comes first. So, here we go! 🙂

We had quite a good day today – puddling around in the morning… [guilty look at the screen] I, ummm… I… I had a weighed out piece of Panettone for breakfast this morning. I don’t know why I feel guilty about it, I just do. It was weighed out so that I had only the amount I was allowed to have, under my reasonably strict guidelines, but I still feel guilty about it anyway. I’ll be back to my usual breakfast again tomorrow morning, but I’ll probably have Panettone again on Sunday (and feel guilty about it again too, no doubt!) But I have decided that this year is going to be the year of the “me“. I’m going to re-invent myself, change things around (like my hair colour *gulp* – do I really dare?!), change my name – it’s Winter now, please, and generally make a better and (obviously) slimmer version of myself. 🙂 That’s a promise, not a threat! 😉

Anyway, back to this morning. I Rifted, he “tinkered”, but we decided that we’d get a bit of joint Rifting in after lunch. We had quite a good bash – once again we started off in the middle of a blinding blizzard – himself died once, but I managed to survive intact throughout. We found two new Porticulums, which will make the rest of this sector a lot easier to access on Sunday. Looking at the map of the Tarken Glacier, it looks like we’ve cut a swathe almost diagonally through the middle of it, and we’re currently mapping and questing in the lower south eastern half – we still have the upper north western half to complete (that’s where the Monk we’re looking for is, Julian!) we should get to that area sometime Sunday, I think… I don’t know what we’re going to do when we finish this area and we hit level 65 – we may have to start off with a couple more new characters and do the whole thing all over again – or run Dungeons and Instances, the thought of which makes my blood run cold… You’ll find a far better explanation of what a “Dungeon” is than I could give you here – and to explain what an “Instance” is, look here. The reason I’m so terrified of running Dungeons and Instances is because I really don’t play very well with strangers – or rather, that’s what other players kept telling me on World of Warcraft (a very different game, though similar in many respects) Anyway, thanks to those people (and some of them were Guild mates, and people I knew!), I now have a phobia about playing in large groups. I’m fine with only another one or two people that I know, but I get severe fluster-lock playing with strangers. As Dungeons and Instances nearly always need a large group of players (called a “Raid Group”), I generally steer clear of them, because unless you have a large Guild that can field the diverse number of players* that you’ll need for a Raid, it means having to “Look for (a) Group” of players who need extra players to do the same Dungeon or Instance that you want to do. This means strangers, and I don’t play well with strangers – and we’ve come the full loop! 🙂 So it’s either grit my teeth and bear it, or start off from scratch with new characters… we’ve got about half a level before we ding 65, and we have about a third of the section left to work through… Interesting times beckon… 😉

So there you have it – our afternoon. Tomorrow promises to be extremely hot, so I shall, wisely, stay home and cower in front of the air conditioner – himself, unfortunately, has to go out shopping, as we’re running out of “stuff”. It’s annoying, really, ‘coz I wanted to go too – but I think I shall leave it for next week, when the forecast says it’ll be a bit cooler (but they’ll probably change that prediction half a dozen times before next Monday!)

Oh, in keeping with my “new me” program, and because it’s the 1st of January today, I had new calendars to put up – one of them is long and skinny and wouldn’t fit where last year’s not quite so long one went, so I’ve had to re-organise my entire desk top – it doesn’t look too bad, actually – now I just have to find something “ornamental” to hang where last year’s one went to fill up the hole… something small-ish and flat-ish… I’m sure I’ll find something, even if I have to go out and buy it! 😉

Weigh-in this morning was not too bad – starting off the year the way we mean to go on with, huh, body? Down to 109.9kg. I would have preferred it to have been a bit lower, as in a day or two I’ll start retaining fluid as though I were a camel, and my weight will try to make a break for outer space, and I only have 27 days left to lose as much weight as I possibly can (before my next appointment with Dr. Y.)

So tune in again tomorrow night – find out if I’ve found something to fill up the hole on the wall, or if I’ve decided that it’s probably easier to go out and buy something… Oh! I just remembered! I was going to tell you what the fireworks last night looked like from our Den window, wasn’t I? Well, they were fabulous! They went on for quite a long time, too – 15? 20 minutes? We had a great view – there were not only the fireworks in the city, but all along the horizon, and a lot closer to home, too – far more than there have been in past years. We think some were from the Golf Club nearby, and they were pretty spectacular, too! This place is really excellent for watching things like the fireworks in the city! 🙂 Of course, I’ll also fill you in on whether the Panettone I ate this morning has played havoc with my weight or not, and whether or not my body is still behaving itself (my guess would be “probably not!”) 🙂 Seeyas then! 🙂

* for instance, you’d need a Healer (self explanatory!), a Tank (does damage with heavy close combat), a Rogue of some sort (sneaky-sneaky-stab-stab), a Hunter-type player capable of inflicting heavy dps (damage per second) from afar, and if possible, a Mage (usually Necromancer) who inflicts damage with DOTs (Damage Over Time spells)

Gone tomorrow… The year 2014, almost over… I can’t say that I’ll miss it, exactly – from our point of view, a lot of not terribly nice things happened, but, on the other hand, a lot of good things happened too, so it is with somewhat mixed feelings that I wave 2014 a fond adieu. I ended up in hospital twice – but, I also found a fantastic new doctor 🙂 I determined to lose weight – by diet alone, sans surgery, something that all the doctors told me that I wouldn’t be able to do (I love proving them wrong! 😀 ) – and I’ve lost 24kg in four months – and I’m a-telling you, I ain’t a-missin’ them thar kilos one tiny little bit! 🙂 But… I’m only half way in my weight loss program. The ubiquitous “They” tell me that each journey starts with the first step in the right direction… and “They” also tell me that “all diets fail in the end”, except, I think, where the dieter really wakes up to themselves and is determined not to fall back into… eating half a packet of biscuits at a time, because “they taste nice”… or… sitting watching television, mindlessly popping Malteasers into their mouth “because they’re there, and they taste nice”. I have also proved to myself since August that I do not get hungry – not even a little bit – when I don’t eat those things, so hunger was never the problem. I never did have a big appetite, but I was lazy, and bored, and if the goodies were there, I’d sit and eat them, for no better reason than that they were there, and they tasted nice. Simple solution. Make sure they’re not there. If they’re not there, I can’t even be tempted (though I don’t think I would be any longer, anyway because the mere thought of eating those things again makes me shudder and feel ill!) Enough about the weight loss, more about the year that almost isn’t any more! 🙂 What else have I accomplished? I’ve started this blog, and kept at it. I’ve started lots of blogs in the past and never posted more than about once or twice in them – I’ve always given up on them with the attitude of “Uh! Who’s going to give a damn what I think, and what I feel, anyway!” Well, with this blog, it’s me who really “doesn’t give a damn” what anyone else thinks about my ramblings, because this blog is for me, as well as about me! What else… I’ve made a friend – well, I hope he’s a friend – and I’ve gone back to my graphics, tentatively, anyway. So… while bad things happened to me and mine, there were a lot of positive things too… so as I said, it is with somewhat mixed feelings that I wave goodbye to 2014. And I wonder, with no little trepidation, what 2015 has in store for us all…

I got a good long session of Rifting in this morning – himself went over to my favourite youngest daughter’s place to set up her new laptop properly, and to get her email working – and I sat and ran gaily through Telara, killing Goblins, Aelfwar, Satyrs, and sort-of wolves, with happy abandon (did I ever mention the fact that I want a keyboard that isn’t one key to the right out of synch with my hands?!!! (and I just had to go and correct two typos in that sentence, caused by that very problem, and I was looking at the keyboard the whole time, ‘coz I can’t touch type!) Grrr! However, I do have a birthday coming up in March… hint? hint? So, anyway, I sat and Telara’d until lunch time… Then I thought to myself “I’ll have another go at creating pretty baubles with lots of bling on them!” and then my favourite youngest daughter rang up and I sat and talked to her instead, so not much bauble-ing got done, but I have the beginnings of a pretty ruby one saved, and as I really don’t get a chance to talk to my favourite youngest daughter very often, I made the most of the opportunity 🙂 Then himself came home, and I went up to the lounge to have a (most welcome) cup of tea and read with him for a bit. We had an early dinner (my soup was Chicken tonight – tomorrow night it’s back to Tomato!), and watched what passes for news these days. Then we watched two episodes of Star Trek Enterprise, and now here I am! 🙂 Writing another missile missive to you all…

Weigh-in this morning was even more proof that things are back to what is laughingly called “normal”. I went down 3 points to 110.1kg, where I was last Sunday, and the Friday before that. Talk about a see-saw! So who knows where it’ll be tomorrow – hopefully my body will start the New Year as it means to go on… and that is, down! Tomorrow I also start back on those wretched pills that make me retain fluid, so I hope I go down a reasonable lot so that the extra fluid I’ll accumulate won’t bounce me back into the mid 110kgs!

So tune in again tomorrow night – find out what the fireworks over the city were like from our lounge room, and if we toasted the New Year in with a daring champagne flute of sparkling mineral water… and most importantly, of course, how this recalcitrant body of mine decided to start off the New Year! 😉

🙂 HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!! 🙂

I received an unexpected present in my email this morning, from WordPress! A summary of my 2014 blogging activities, and seeing as how I didn’t even start this blog until August sometime, it makes for quite interesting reading. I didn’t realise that I had more than just one or two readers, so thanks everyone for looking in on my sometimes slightly unorthodox musings! 🙂 I hope you’ve enjoyed, and will continue to enjoy, reading about the trials and tribulations in my dieting and weight loss endeavours, and in my otherwise quiet and totally uneventful life… Ahhhh… and I have this great bridge for sale, too – only one owner, a little old lady who rode her shark with feet over it every week on her way to the Auction House… 🙂 (Uneventful? I should be so lucky! 😉 ) As I was given the option to share the results with you, I posted it, and if you want to have a look at it, it follows this post.

I Rifted this morning, but it was a late start – someone must have tripped over one of the cables at Trion or something, because first the shards were a bit shaky, then they came down altogether, and didn’t come back online until well after 10.30am. I’d noticed that it seemed a little jerky last night, too, and what’s more (or it may be the true culprit!), Glyph crashed on me last night, right in the middle of logging on – sent an error report, and proceeded to work just fine *shrug* – who knows? Anyway, once it was back up this morning I quested Gingerlilly until lunchtime (so not really all that long, after all!)

After lunch I drifted back to graphics for a while – made some little buttons/gems – “thingies” – for my project… and this time I did make sure to keep saving things! 🙂 I’m not sure if I like them though – they’re nice enough, I suppose, but I really wanted something more… dazzling? They need a bit more “bling”, or something… I’ll keep working on them. So far I’ve made 5 round ones, and 5 diamond shaped (i.e. squares sitting on a corner!) ones, but as I said, I really wanted them brighter. I’m having to dredge deep in my almost forgotten store of graphics know-how, trying to remember how I used to do things – actually that’s not quite right – I do remember how I used to do things, it’s just that this new version of Eye Candy is different from the one I used to use – and quite frankly, it’s not even remotely as good. In a totally misguided attempt to make things “slicker” and more “streamlined” and “modern”, they’ve changed, or rather, omitted, a lot of very useful and necessary controls! Especially in the drop shadow controls… I miss the old one a lot. Oh well, such is the price of progress. A prettier package at the expense of useful tools! So what else is new? I’m not impressed, Alien Skin! Yes, there are work-arounds, yes, they do take longer to produce what isn’t, in my opinion, a comparable result. Back to the drawing board…

I’m not sure what’s happening tomorrow, New Year’s Eve; we’ll probably treat it as just another night (and probably be spending a bit of it in Telara, too 😉 ), only we’ll open the blinds and turn the lights down so that we can watch the fireworks on the city skyline when they start popping, and maybe, just maybe… if we’re feeling really festive, we’ll toast each other with mineral water – in champagne flutes! 🙂 As for New Year Resolutions? I think we resolved not to make any, many years ago! Is anyone else doing anything special for New Year’s? Do drop us a line and tell us all about it!

Weigh-in this morning found my scales and my body in collusion again… Yes, I went up. Only one point, to 110.4kg, but my traitorous body put on weight! I was not pleased! Especially after being so good, and going down almost a kilo in one day… so on the other hand, maybe it went down so much because it knew it was about to go up, and rather than go up a lot, it went down a lot first, so as not to make to going up look so bad? I hope that made sense… if you read it through three times slowly, like I just did, it does… sort of…

So stay tuned tomorrow night – never mind the celebrations, this is more important – and find out if I went up again, in which case I shall be most upset, or if I went down… or, heaven help us, I stayed the same… and if you’re very, very good, on Thursday night I might even tell you what the fireworks were like 🙂

A present from WordPress that arrived in my email this morning! I was given the option of sharing it with all my readers (and it seems that there’s a few more than I thought there were!), so here it is – regular blog follows (or perhaps precedes, whichever comes first…)

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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 660 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 11 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

That the Christmas Cards came down… the tree will probably come down next Sunday, anyway, and getting rid of the cards might give me a bit more desk space. Unfortunately, that means that my pretty plastic-resin-crystal stag will have to be packed away until next Christmas too, and I rather like him sitting there on my giant pill box… I suppose I could make the case that he’s a stag, not a reindeer, and therefore is not traditionally bound to Christmas per se… Hmmm… good point! I think I’ll leave him out – I have the perfect spot already picked out for him to live in, too! 🙂 This morning we plotted and schemed for some exciting new hair colours for me – I hope they’re not too extreme, but hang it all, I don’t really care if they are! I want something different… Later, I experimented a bit with a super new ummm.. utility? App? I’m not sure what you’d call it, but it makes “draw your own nebulas”. I’m not even sure of it’s name, but you can find it here. My favourite eldest daughter posted about it on Facebook, and when I went and had a look at it I was instantly hooked! It’s basically a black background, with 8 different colours you can use to make your “nebula” with – red, yellow, grass green, teal, ultramarine, purple, black (on a black background???), and white. On the right hand side it has a set of controllers and sliders, and some “presets”, including “fine”, “intense”, “smooth”, “worms”, and a few other ones, which dictate the strength and cloudiness of your “nebula”. It’s quite mesmerising, and while every time I use it I fully intend to use only two colours, to make something that I can turn into “gems” for yet another of my projects (this time for myself), I find myself thinking: “I wonder what some blue (or green, or purple, or whatever I haven’t already used) would look like in there…”, and before I know it, I have a whole jumble of colours instead of just the two I started out with. I’ll try again tomorrow… 🙂 After lunch I got stuck into some serious Rifting (well, not really serious serious, but certainly “head down, tail up” questing – leveling up my new and improved Gingerlilly), though the “baby” quests I’m going through at the moment I could probably do with my eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back – as long as it was my left hand, that is. I had the same problem with World of Warcraft, too, and it’s because I’m an altoholic… I create an awful lot of characters, and of course, they all have to start off at level 1… so by the time you’ve run, ummm…. 20+ level 1 characters through all the “starter” quests and up to about level 35, everything starts to get a little boring and humdrum. Also, I always intend to use different Classes, and different “builds” – that is the type of character: Warrior (well, duh!), Cleric (read: Priest), Rogue (read: Hunter), and Mage (read: Magic User). Each Class is made up of several sub-Classes, and each sub-Class has different – sometimes very different – fighting “styles”. So I always intend to try something different, but somehow I always seem to gravitate back to the style that I find the easiest (for me) and the most effective. I have a level 60 Rogue (Hunter), who’s quite fun to work with, but I find her much more fragile and “delicate” than my Mages, and I had a level 60 Warrior, but I hated playing a Warrior, and found it very hard work and not much fun – so she, unfortunately, no longer exists. Personally, I find Mages the easiest and most effective to play – unlike World of Warcraft, Rift’s Mages are not delicate little “Clothies” (Mages wear cloth armor, which is supposedly “fragile”) who fall over if you sneeze on them – no, we’re made of much sterner stuff, and can do a lot of damage, when riled! 😉 Although there are a lot of ready-made builds for each Class, where your soul points go as you level is pre-determined by whichever build you’ve chosen. I prefer to construct my own build, and put my points where I want them to go, and not where the game thinks they should go… So I always seem to end up with the same old build – a Warlock (good for Damage over Time spells), Necromancer (because you get a pet to fight with you, a few DoTs, and a lot of very damaging Primary Bolts (a sort of a “Zap!”spell)), and a Dominator (because you get at least one very good Primary Bolt) So as I said… it can get a bit boring and humdrum, unless you’re playing with someone else.

Weigh-in this morning, I’m sure you’ll be glad to hear, was back to “situation normal” again. That’s right, I went up… to where I was the day before yesterday, at 110.3kg. So now it looks like I’m back to the old “gnaw on the nails and fret myself into a nervous breakdown if I go up too much, or stay the same for too long, or don’t go down enough to please my anxious little brain” state of existence. Ah well, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” – the more things change, the more they stay the same 🙂

So Call in again tomorrow night, and find out if I’ve made any headway in making little gems out of pretty nebulae for my latest project – or if I’ve thought of another possible build to use on one of my Mages… but most importantly, to find out if my nails are chewed down to the quick yet! 😉 Catchyas on the flip side! 🙂