Up! 🙂 The wreath is on the door, and Julian is off to Adelaide – only for the day this time – tomorrow morning at sparrow’s, ummm… “yawn”? 😉 My favourite eldest daughter is coming over under her own steam to keep me company, make me cups of coffee, and watch “Agents of Shield” and “Person of Interest” with me, and himself touches down in Melbourne again at 7.00pm, so Flipper and I will get dinner 😉

We had the lift repairmen in today – we only have the one lift, and although it’s being fully dismantled, repaired, refurbished, and re-mantled again in February, it’s been very rattly and jerky for the last few days, so rather than wait for Christmas Day and a major lift outage, we called in the repair guys and it’s now faster, smoother, and quieter than it’s been for about five years! Apparently something went bung in one of the guide rollers under the lift… it only took them about 25 minutes to fix, so I hope they did it properly! I worked on my project today – mainly downloading brushes, gradients, patterns, styles, and textures that I might use with it – at the moment I’m having the most problems creating a suitable style for some of the elements in it. Oh, a style? A style is a way of applying a colour, bevel, effects, and/or texture to an image, all in one foul swoop 🙂 They’re very handy little beasties, but sometimes you can spend quite literally days, trying to get just the right look… and that’s exactly where I’m at with my project! My main problem today has been tiredness. All day, I’ve had trouble keeping my eyes open – I have no idea why, I slept well last night, and I feel perfectly well… it’s been most annoying!

We put the Christmas Tree up about mid-morning, and it’s looking very pretty indeed, with twinkling stars and pretty baubles! Flipper was asleep in her lounge room basket when we started, and was most intrigued when we took the tree out of its box! If it had been Artie, he would have had a field day, diving in one end of the long, narrow box, pelting along it, and out the other end, then reversing the process and scuttling, helter skelter down it the other way! Flipper, as I said, was most intrigued, but contented herself with peering down one end of the box, walking down the outside of it, and peering through the other end. She’s an old girl, and getting quite stiff, despite the injections of cartrophen that she gets for her arthritis, but she had fun 🙂 All that’s left to do now for Christmas is wrap the presents… I was going to give himself’s present(s) to my favourite eldest daughter to take home and wrap for me, and I was a little worried as to how she was going to get it home without himself to drive her… until it was pointed out to me that she didn’t have to take it home to wrap it where himself wouldn’t be able to see it – because he’s not going to be home tomorrow, is he, so she can do it in comfort, on the dining room table, over here, and it can go straight under the tree! (if I can find the wrapping paper, gift cards, and the sticky tape!) 🙂

I know I rabbited on a bit last night about presentation (of places), and the general attitude to people with weight problems, but it also occurred to me that there is a genuine lack of thought in food that is prepared, by the weight loss industry, for meal replacement products and supplements. Everything is sweet! Milkshakes come in chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla, and so do their “desserts”. Meal replacement bars come in chocolate, berry, and cappuccino, and probably other assorted sweet flavours… Can anyone spot the problem with this? No? If I were a cynical person (which I am!), I would say that this was a deliberate ploy by the weight loss industry to reinforce the desire for sweet foods… Shouldn’t they rather be attempting to steer the overweight person away from sweet foods (and when they’ve finished their weight loss course, probably towards more sugary foods) It’s a problem. As far as I’ve been able to find, and I have been looking, Optifast are about the only meal replacement program that offer soups as part of their products – only three, Tomato, Vegetable, and Chicken. I also went looking for both calorie-less or low calorie savory essences, or food additives, which could be used to make more savory alternatives in meal replacement foods… I didn’t find very many. Why? There seems to be a plethora of low calorie sweet additives, but only about one or two of the more savory kind. If the powers that be are truly interested in reducing the amount of obesity in the country, why isn’t more research being done?! Or is there too much money at stake? (see? I’m cynical…)

Weigh-in this morning. It was not good, and I have a horrible confession to make. I hopped on the scales, and they said I’d gone back up again to 113.0kg. They said this three times. So I cheated. I’ve found that what you weigh depends (a bit) on how you stand on the scales… So I weighed myself a fourth time, standing just a little differently. Bingo! 112.7kg, one down on yesterday, and back to what I was two days ago. I did it again twice more, with the same result. So while my graph shows a drop, I know, and now you know too, that I cheated. I’m not sorry, I’m human, but I do feel bad about it. In the end, I really only cheated myself – but I’ve probably disappointed some of you, and I am sorry for that 😦

Tune in again tomorrow night – find out all the latest in news, gossip, and gripes. See if I’m still cheating (hey! At least I was honest enough to tell you – I didn’t have to, you know! 😉 ) or if the scales have finally got it right 🙂 Catchya then! 🙂

Appearances. I don’t just mean how people look or dress, I’m talking more about buildings and their exterior and/or interior presentation. Julian and I went shopping today (again!), this time to get a slightly smaller (alright, a lot smaller) Christmas Tree. We (read: “I”) decided to go first to Myer, then Big W, Target, and finally, DJ’s. I was reminiscing about how I used to enjoy going shopping at Myer, many, many years ago, but didn’t particularly like DJ’s, because I thought of them as being a little bit too “snobbish”, yet these days, I avoid Myer, and usually make straight for DJ’s, even though it’s almost impossible to get served there. Why? Because Myer have begun to let themselves get very “down at heel”. The floors are overcrowded with racks of dubious quality goods; if you’re in a wheelchair, or have a shopping trolley, it’s very difficult to get around the display tables that they (and just about everyone else, it seems!) insist on placing in the middle of their fairly narrow aisles, the ambiance is gloomy and “feels” sort of dark. What’s more, for seven years, they haven’t bothered to re-number the floor listings in their lift, so that you’re not always sure which floor it is that you’ve arrived at. Generally speaking, the whole store has an air of dowdiness and tiredness. Compared to DJ’s, or even Target for that matter, Myer just doesn’t present well. So anyway, we did our shopping, bought the tree, etc., but instead of going home, we went off to a certain shop which deals in undergarments for the larger woman (*rolls eyes*) I haven’t been there for a long time – many years, in fact – I usually get whatever I have to from them online, but seeing as I’ve lost some weight, I thought that this time perhaps I’d better try the items on (I was shopping for a nightgown – my old winter caftan is almost falling off me, and it’s too hot to wear in summer, anyway) I have to say that when we got there I was a lot taken aback. They made Myer look like the crown jewels! Frankly, it was a pretty horrible place… shabby, grubby, messy, and extremely depressing. There were two other ladies there, one was trying on some undergarments – there wasn’t much privacy, I’m afraid, the other lady was just walking around. They both looked hot, tired, embarrassed and miserable. You know, it’s bad enough that fat people have such a hard time finding anything that fits them. It’s bad enough that those clothes are expensive, but not worth the materials used to make them. It’s bad enough that we have to put up with the sidelong glances, the looks that clearly say “If you didn’t eat so much, you wouldn’t be so gross!”, impatience if you’re clumsy or slow… All those things are bad enough on their own, but to have to shop in places like that totally crushes your sense of self worth – you begin to feel that perhaps that’s really all you do deserve! I don’t care if big people tell you that they’re proud of who they are, I don’t care if they tell you that they do love themselves, and that everything’s alright – because I think they’re lying. I do the same thing most of the time, and when I do, I’m lying. There are only two decent shops that cater to the larger figure, My Size, and Autograph. Unfortunately, a lot of big people can’t afford to shop at those places, My Size in particular. Even I, who can afford their clothes, find great difficulty in justifying buying an only reasonably nice top for over $100. Target and Kmart do stock some larger fittings, but not nearly enough… I’m losing weight, and it’s really not that hard – I’m not going hungry, I’m not really missing out on anything. Sure, it dull, boring, and monotonous – and it’s not forever. But it is fairly expensive, so please, don’t blame fat people for being fat. You have no idea what sort of lives they lead. You have no idea what sort of problems they face. And you really, really have no idea if their problem is a simple case of over-eating, or whether there’s a chemical imbalance which prevents them from ever feeling satisfied, let alone “full”. Could you cope, if you felt really hungry, all the time? Please think about that, next time you’re tempted to sneer, or “fat shame” another person!

Sorry about the rant! 🙂 It’s just that that place today, and those two miserable women, made me almost want to weep at the way society treats us “fatties”

Weigh-in this morning wasn’t quite so bad – things could have been better – but then again, they could have been worse! I went down to 112.8kg – not quite the 112.7kg that I was the day before yesterday, and I suppose I’ll do what I always do when I want to annoy myself (??), I’ll stay the same tomorrow, and probably the day after, before starting to go down again. I think I’ll call them “mini plateaus” 😉

Anyway, tune in tomorrow for more guff from me – I promise I’ll try not to get so carried away – we decorate the tree tomorrow after breakfast, so stand by for a blow by blow description! My project is coming along nicely, thank you very much, and you’ll even get to find out whether or not I’ve annoyed myself by fluffing around on 112.8kg again, or if I’ve gone down another couple of notches! 🙂 See you all on the flip side! 🙂

That I thought of last night that I wanted to get in Rift? I tried it out on Faeblight, and then thought.. “now I have to get her to level 15, and then play Shuffle The Characters” to get her across to Laethys… What to do? what to do?? In the end, I bought a few more Credits, and did a Race Chance in the Barbershop on the character who used to be known as Mossrose – I turned her from a High Elf into a Mathosian… Then I bought a Name Change scroll, crossed my fingers that I’d be able to get the name I wanted, and renamed her…. Roseinbloom! More expensive, but much quicker, cleaner, and far less stress 🙂 So, that’s what the name was… “Roseinbloom” – I thought of it last night while I was desperately looking around my desk for something “inspiring” to use as the nightly blog title. My eyes fell on the roses that Julian had given me on Sunday for our Anniversary, and it went like this: “roses”… “rose buds”… “rose blooms”… “roses blooming”… “rose in bloom” “hmmmm… Roseinbloom – wouldn’t that be a pretty name for a character! I wonder if I could get it… I must try!” And that, folks, is pretty much how all of my characters come into existence! I stumble across a name I really like, and the next thing you know, I just have to create a character with that name! Of course, I feel that I can’t possibly ditch the name, so the character has to remain… to be shunted around from shard to shard as I have to make room for new names… I mean characters…

So that’s what I did this morning – I also took Belezza up another couple of levels, then quit out of Rift and worked on my project for a while. It’s so sad that things have become so “nasty” on the internet that whenever I want to download Photoshop filters, or brushes, or styles, or whatever, I have to get himself to vet the download site first and make sure it’s clean – there are so many really nasty viruses out there, even on really “nice” sites, so it’s far better to be safe than sorry… Anyway, I downloaded a number of brushes, and much to my annoyance, the person who had made one of the brush sets I really wanted to use, had put bevelling on them! This might look fairly smart when used with a solid colour, but adding effects or styles just made them look lumpy and misshapen. Grrr… However, after a bit of trial and error, I found a work around for it. If you’re into graphics, this is how you do it. Make your brush picture on a new layer in a solid, dark colour (black is good!). Click the magic wand in the centre of the image, and you’ll get the familiar “marching ants” around the image, but just slightly outside the edge of the brush image. So go to your Select menu and go to “Modify”. Choose “contract” – and this is where the slightly fiddly bit comes in. You pretty much have to guess how many pixels you have to shrink your “marching ants”! Now, I’m a person who can tell you, within one pixel, where the centre of something is, or where the edge of a pattern is, or whatever (says she boastfully – but I can! Just ask Julian!), and even so, it took me two tries. I “guestimated” 4 pixels, but that wasn’t quite “tight” enough, so I adjusted it to 3 pixels, and it was a perfect fit to the brush image. OK, so now you have your bevelled brush image nicely selected. Still with the area selected, open up a new layer, and use your Paintbucket tool to fill the selection on the new layer with… well… black. Now you have your brush image as a flat, black area that you can style, colour, use a glass, chrome, or bevel filter on, without any of the “lumps” or “bumps” you got when you were trying to do it on the original pre-bevelled brush.

End of tonight’s lecture on graphics! 🙂

Ahhh… so you all heard that unearthly shrieking and wailing sound this morning… well, it wasn’t the wind… It was me. Weigh-in this morning was absolutely, totally devastating! I couldn’t believe it. I’m still not sure if I believe it even now… but I weighed myself three times, and each weigh-in was the same. I’d gone from a svelte-feeling 112.7kg… back up to an ugly, fat-feeling 113.0kg – the same as I weighed the day before yesterday. It was horrible! And this time I can’t even blame my medication, because I’m not taking it at the moment, and haven’t, for over a week! I don’t want to talk about it.

Tune in tomorrow night for more of the goings on at Casa Nostra (our house, as opposed to Cosa Nostra, [literally] “our business”) Hopefully today’s weigh-in was an “aberration”! See you then….

A lovely new name to try out in Rift! I wonder if anyone else has already got it… No, I won’t tell you what it is in case anyone reading this plays Rift too and tries to pinch it from me 🙂 I’ll tell you if I manage to get it, though 🙂 And all because I was trying to think of a title for tonight’s blog… I was looking at the roses that himself gave me yesterday, and… no! no! I’ll give the new name away if I continue down that path! I had a very nice day today – even more hair chopped off (I think I still have a little left… 😉 ) and it looks like last week, only better – so I am most pleased! 🙂

I can’t believe that it’s Christmas next week! We haven’t even got the tree up yet, but I’m informed by a reliable source that we’re to do that tomorrow. And then there’s the wrapping 😦 I hate wrapping presents – I used to do a good job, wrapping, but it absolutely wrecks my back, so by the time I’ve wrapped about two small presents, my back’s so sore I can’t concentrate properly anymore, and, well, the “gift neatness factor” suffers a great deal! I think I’ll do what I did last year – give himself’s presents to my favourite eldest daughter to take home and wrap for me, and bring them back on either Sunday, The Great Birthday Bash, or Christmas Eve, when they come over for eggnog, the traditional reading of “The Night Before Christmas”, and the Hanging of the Stockings (except they’re not “hung”, they’re propped up against the back of the couch, from which Flipper’s bedding will have been removed)

This afternoon I played Rift (so, what else do I ever do, hmmm?), and decided to take Belezza a bit further. I took one of the Experience enhancing Vials that all the girls were given, and…. I know it boosts your experience gain by 160%, but I’d forgotten just how quickly they level you up! Five (5!) levels in a short afternoon! I’m now level 23! Of course, it’s all “baby stuff” at the moment – quests I’ve done so often I can almost do them with my eyes closed, and one hand tied behind my back – except that having one hand tied behind my back tends to make jumping a little hard! There’s an Achievement you can get at Smith’s Haven, by jumping off the bridge into the water and not taking any damage (not that anyone takes any damage, jumping from high places, anymore!) It’s called “A Quick Escape”, and roughly equates to the Silverwood Achievement “So Much Fun I Did It Once”, where you jump off the bridge outside Sanctum, again, “without taking any damage”. Anyway, there I was in Smith’s Haven, and I’ve never been able to find the right place to jump from to get this Achievement – visibility ain’t too good, and it’s only a very narrow strip of water you have to jump into, so I thought I’d “just have a look over the side here” – but there was a wall in the way. I didn’t want to waste my jump and have to swim all the way back for nothing, so I tried to jump very carefully, so as not to go right over… and *splosh*, into the water I went, and must have fluked the right spot, because I (finally, after all these years, characters, and multiple tries!) got the Achievement! Yayyy! 🙂 I know where the spot I accidentally fell from is now – I don’t think I’ll ever forget it – so I can take all the others who missed out, so many times, and they can all get it (if I can be bothered, that is! 😉 ) And I really must get back to Dimension building, too – Cersie is having real problems storing all the Dimension stuff coming her way… mostly from Minion activities!

Weigh-in this morning was extra good! I did it! I did it! I’m into the 112kg zone at long last! I was down to 112.7kg! Almost half way! (half way is 112.0kg) So as you can imagine, I was pretty excited 🙂 Now, if I can go down another 3 (or 4) points tomorrow, to 112.4 (or .3), and then another 3 (or 4) points the day after that… I still might not be exactly half way, but I’ll be darn close! 🙂

So call by again tomorrow night – see if I’ve managed to get any closer to that magical, most elusive 112.0kg half way point, or if I’ve come to another stand-still. If I’ve gone back up, I expect you’ll have already heard my wail of disappointment; my howl of anguish… hopefully, it won’t come to that, but if you do hear a long, loud cry of despair, that’ll be what it is 🙂 So don’t miss out! That news, and lots of other waffle will await you here! See you then! 🙂

24 years ago… 🙂 At the time, people were astonished… horrified… amused… said things like “Oh, it won’t last!”, or made snide remarks about Miller* and her toy boy 🙂 But, I guess they were all wrong (and as anyone who knows me well will tell you, I’m the sort of person who gets great enjoyment out of proving people wrong! 😛 ) Yes, 24 years ago himself and I, my two daughters, my mother, and Julian’s parents, turned up at the Registry of Births, Deaths, and Marriages in Melbourne, and were married by a Mr. Dullard. We’d been living together for five years, so you couldn’t really say that it was a hasty, or a spur of the moment decision… but I was more terrified, this second time around, than I think I had ever been in my life – what on earth was I doing, marrying someone who was 20 years my junior?! I needn’t have worried – it was the best decision I think I ever made! 🙂 After all, who else would have put up with me for 24 years? It’s been a fun ride, and hopefully there’ll be many more years of me stubbornly refusing to pick up his dirty socks! 😉 He gave me roses, and I gave him a heart shaped stone… we never buy each other a big, “special” Anniversary present, just something little for the day itself, then we go out and get ourselves something nice, together.

Enough “mush”! 🙂

Despite it being our Anniversary, it was also a Sunday, so off we went, hand in hand, and singing gaily, into Telara. Well, after killing a second big, bad Boss (another Dragon – I think I died twice there – himself didn’t! *pout*), we figured, after looking at the map, that that was about it for that area! I’d hit level 64 – only one more level to go – himself was close to levelling, and the second of the three new areas, Drauheim, was completed. Time to move on to the third and last new area, The Tarken Glacier (level 64 – 65). We thought. No, the big blue dude had another nasty up his sleeve for us. This time we had to head off to kill not one, not two, but three, big, nasty Bosses! This was where I died big time! I think I died about 8 or 9 times… cost a Pope and an Emperor’s ransom in healing! 😦 We killed the first one with only major difficulties, we managed to bump off the second one with a great deal of trouble (we both died multiple times here!), but the third one? We didn’t have a clue how to handle him, so we went looking for strategies on the ‘Net… one of the videos showed a level 65 and his companion tackling him… the companion got killed very early in the piece, but apparently couldn’t get back into the area to assist her friend, so the poor guy had to try to solo this monster… Throwing loaves of bread at him weakened him (??? apparently), and there were sorts of pustules growing around the circle which healed him, I think (or was that the second Boss, and it was himself who used the pustules while I was recovering from getting killed, yet again?) Anyway, it was a very long fight – he was doing it solo – but he did manage to kill him in the end. Julian and I decided that there was no way a level 64 and a level 63 were going to be able to manage him, so deciding that discretion was the better part of valour, we left it until another day – when we’re both level 65!

As we had already started a couple of the Tarken Glacier quests, we went there and got a fair bit done, but it was starting to get late-ish (we usually finish up around 4.45pm or so), so we went back home to Draumheim, dusted down, and called it a day. I can’t help thinking, though, if that last Boss in Draumheim (a level 63 – 64 area), wot we couldn’t manage was so tough that a level 65 had trouble handling him, what can possibly await us in Tarken Glacier, a level 64 – 65 area? I shudder to think….

Weigh-in this morning went very well… down to 113.0kg! Hopefully, tomorrow I’ll be in the 112kg zone – wouldn’t that be good! In fact, wouldn’t it be really, really good if I could get into the 111kg zone by Christmas! Dream on, Winter, dream on! 🙂

So that was our 24th Anniversary day! Julian actually went and dug out our Marriage Certicate, cos neither of us could remember if it’d been 23 years, or 24 years, and it was December 14th, 1990 – so that makes it 24 years.. 🙂

Tune in again tomorrow night – find out if I relented and picked up his dirty socks (I won’t!), see if I sank below 113kg and into 112kg waters, or if I spent yet another day treading water at the same weight (again!) Who knows? Tomorrow night, all will be revealed… 😉

*Miller – back in those days I was known by the surname of “Miller” – don’t ask! It’d take too long to explain at this point in the blog! If you really want to know, ask, and all shall be revealed….

Already, and summer has only just begun! 😦 Oh well, looks like I’ll just have to stay at home and cower under the air conditioner… Once again this morning we had to go and do some shopping – yet more things that we forgot… it must be the heat! However, we gobbled through breakfast a lot more quickly than we normally do, and left early, before “The Great Christmas Shopping Race” started in the car parks. It was actually quite good, getting there so early… it hadn’t had too much of a chance to get hot, the Valet Car Park was almost empty, and the shops weren’t bursting at their seams yet. I even managed to maneuver my wheelchair into Cardiology, which is, as its name suggests, a Card and Gift Shop, with teeny-weeny, itsy-bitsy crowded aisles and lots of very pretty, very breakable things in very awkward to get around places. I felt like a very nervous bull cow in a china shop! 😉 Still, I got what I wanted in there, and Julian only had to pilot me around one corner of the aisles. I really need a rear view mirror on that contraption – the only trouble is, there’s nowhere to attach it to! We got what we really needed to get, but poor Julian had to walk over again this afternoon to get a few things that he was going to get this morning – until I decided to go too, and “cramped his style”, so to speak 😉 Hmmm, I wonder if it/they could have anything to do with our Anniversary tomorrow! 😉

I took Belezza through her Christmas Dailies when we got home, and discovered, to my enormous delight, that just about all my girls, on all shards, had been given a “gift” from Trion Games (the guys who run Rift) It’s a “Trove” (or “set”) of Boosts. Nearly all of them got 10 each – some (who have had these once before) only got seven, and some, who still had a few left over from last time, got none. They boost things like your Experience (from any source), Favor, Notoriety, Prestige, Skill, and Currency by 160% for two hours, and they last through death (so that if you use them, and you get killed almost straight away or something, you don’t lose the remaining 2 hours worth of “boost”, which is pretty cool!) Anyway, they all got them, including one who was supposed to be an experimental character, created by a friend to play over here, if he wants to 🙂 It took the rest of the afternoon just going around from shard to shard collecting and collating all of these! Oh dear… I just went and counted up how many characters I have altogether! There are…. *gulp* 58 of them! Oh my! *blush*

And now! The item you’ve all been waiting for! (Ta Daaa! *drum roll*)

Winter’s Famous Eggnog

6 egg yolks
3/4 cup of castor sugar
1 cup of brandy (250ml)
1 cup of dark rum (250ml)
2.5 cups of milk (625ml)
1 cup of thick cream (250ml)
6 egg whites, stiffly beaten
Freshly grated nutmeg to taste

Separate the eggs and beat the egg yolks until they are light. Gradually add the sugar and beat the mixture until thick and pale. Chill in the fridge for a few minutes. Slowly beat in the brandy and rum. Using a wire whisk beat in the milk and heavy (thick) cream, beating constantly. Using a clean bowl and whisk, beat the egg whites until they form stiff peaks, then fold gently into the eggnog mixture and sprinkle the surface with nutmeg to taste. Serves 12.

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So there it is. Enjoy! But remember – it IS very strong, it IS very rich, and it IS very probably lethal if you drink it and drive! so whatever you do, DON’T! Promise?!

Weigh in this morning made my teeth grind, and I’m afraid I said quite a few very naughty words… actually, I didn’t say them, I yelled them (I hope the neighbours didn’t hear me!) I was most displeased! And annoyed. Scratch that, make that furious! I stayed the same! Again! 113.4kg! I am not amused. Tomorrow’s weigh-in had better be better! (or else! *dark look at scales*)

So tune in again tomorrow night and see if the scales remain unscathed, and if I have moved up, or down the hopefully still intact scales (heaven forbid that I stay the same, again!) – oh, and any and all other interesting and exciting items that I deem to be of interest! 🙂

The sound of a dentist’s drill! At least this time it only sounded horrible – no pain now though, even without a needle, as there are no tooth nerves to twinge. I rather thought that Dr. N. would have removed the bridge section with the cracked screw, and drilled it out at a bench or something – he didn’t. He drilled it out “in situ” (i.e. in my mouth) It took for–evah! (it was only supposed to be a half hour appointment!) He’d got the special, tiny, terribly thin drills in specially – and don’t forget, he had to drill out a titanium screw that had broken in half, and become very firmly wedged inside the bridge, all without damaging the thread! He broke 5 drill bits on it, then used a tungsten drill… and finally broke through. The thread was still intact, so after cleaning out where he’d drilled, all that was left to do was for a nice, shiny, unbroken, brand new screw to be put in, and that was that – “See you in October 2015” for the upper bridge maintenance that I was supposed to have had done last time 🙂 (and he still hasn’t noticed the broken tooth!) Er… and apparently he’s been reading this blog, too, so… (*waves at screen*) “Hi Dr. N.!” 🙂

We’re both feeling a bit better today, thank goodness, but by the time we got home after all of that, our tongues were really hanging out for a cup of coffee. We had lunch, and I don’t know about himself, but I was getting more and more agitated because we hadn’t heard anything from his sister. I kept whinging at him to call her, but he just kept saying, in a terribly laid back fashion (how could he be so calm!) – “Oh, she’ll call when she has the time…” I just wanted to know what was happening! The electrician came very promptly at 2.00pm to install the new, replacement oven, which only goes to prove that miracles do still happen! A tradesman arrived, not early…. not late… but exactly on time! Incredible! Still nothing from his sister. I’m sitting on an ant hill… Melissa finally called close to 5-ish. Apparently his mother had allowed herself to become terribly undernourished and dehydrated (again!) They’ve got her on all sorts of drips and stuff, and she’ll (probably) remain in hospital for another couple of days – she’s already fighting to go back home (which at this stage of the proceedings would not be a good idea!), and she’ll have to have someone to call in every day and do bits and pieces around the home – make the bed, cook meals, do the laundry – that sort of stuff. However, going by the last time this happened, the poor hapless individual helping out will be sent packing after a day or two, and the whole pattern, over the course of about eight or so months, will repeat.

Oh joy! 🙂 Christmas has come to Telara! Of course, “Telara” being in the USA (I mean, where else would you expect to find it? Isn’t the USA the only country in the world? Worth mentioning, that is!) it’s winter time, and snow is falling in all the capital cities! 🙂 Lots of fun games to play and get little “rewards” for – like hitting 8 merrymakers with a snowball! Or lighting the way for lost travelers! Or tossing a Christmas present to someone with a grey cloud and the word “Humbug” hanging over their heads! Or, you can go and join in the toboggan slide where you have to hit a certain number of snowmen who are lining the path on the way down. If you miss one, you can toboggan back uphill to go back and get them! 😉 The “rewards” are special “Snowflake” tokens with which you can buy all sorts of goodies from the special World Event merchants located near the gigantic Christmas Tree in your nearest capital city! 🙂 So, what with all of that, and Minions to be sent off on Adventures, who has the time for questing anymore? 😉

Weigh-in this morning was disheartening. I only went down one point, to 113.4kg 😦 Well, I did go down, even if not by much… but what’s going on? Is my body on a “Go Slow” strike or something? Have they forgotten that I’m their Union rep.?! What would my body do if I went on strike, hmmm?! At this rate I’ll never get down to the 112kg range before Christmas! And now I’m hearing traitorous mutterings that I have to have just a little Eggnog! One teaspoon is all I’ll have, one teaspoon! And, I’ll go without morning and afternoon tea! (I might even skip lunch!) That Eggnog is almost lethal, and terribly rich! If I have more than one teaspoon of it I’ll probably put on 8 kilos, and break out in spots! Ackshally, I’ll post the recipe here tomorrow night – and you’ll see what I mean! 😉

So stay tuned for your very own copy of “Winter’s Official Eggnog Recipe”, and tomorrow night’s installment of “The Trials and Tribulations of a Dedicated Dieter at Christmas Time”, plus other world shattering “News Stories of the Day!” 🙂

Remembering things. I forgot two important items when we did our “surgical strike” yesterday (was it really only yesterday? It feels as though it were sometime last week…) I forgot that it was not only Christmas I had to worry about, it was also two VIP Birthdays, and of equal importance, an Anniversary, that I had to get “bits and pieces” for! (did that last sentence make sense? Maybe…) “Oh well”, thought I this afternoon, “I can always talk Julian into calling calling in at the shops tomorrow after I’ve had my screw replaced, or at the very least, get him to drop me off and drive around the block a couple of times whilst I purchase these most important of articles”… I thought…

My favourite eldest daughter was over today, and unfortunately we had no episodes of “Agents of Shield” to watch, so we watched “Person of Interest instead”. It’s really getting gritty at the moment, occasionally a trifle hard to follow (though I suspect that that was largely due to my head cold!) All the “threads” are beginning to come together, and various seemingly random events are being explained, and/or tidied up. As well as having lunch and watching taped shows, tentative arrangements were made for The Great Family Birthday Feast, now to be held on the 21st (if Kate agrees!), because this Sunday is our Anniversary and there was some slight tetchiness regarding having to share it with Birthday celebrations… Also discussed were Christmas Eve, and Winter’s Lethal Eggnog (well, maybe not “lethal”, but very definitely “extremely potent”!) Now, I guess everything’s sort of on hold, because…

This afternoon while himself was dropping my favourite eldest daughter home, his sister rang, sounding somewhat distressed and agitated. She said she’d just rung (from Sydney) for an ambulance to go and attend her mother (in Adelaide) as she was very poorly. When himself arrived I told him what his sister had said, and he rang her back. Little was known at that stage other than that she was too weak to walk and sounded terrible. Melissa, Julian’s sister, isn’t too crash hot herself, having had surgery to fix a broken tendon in her shoulder not that long ago, and then falling down a flight of stairs a few days ago! Anyway, she’s off to Adelaide tomorrow, and it may be that himself will have to go over too. A bit more news came through later this evening – his mother has a very nasty chest infection (let’s hope it isn’t, and doesn’t develop into the terrible bout of double pneumonia she had some time back!) We’ll know more in the morning, but now I’m worried about the wretched cold that Julian has – he’s a lot worse than I am, and I only feel pretty lousy… plus the fact that a nasty summer cold isn’t exactly the very best medicine for his mother at this particular point in time. I fear that this is going to complicate our Christmas arrangements more than somewhat… Oh, and our brand new replacement oven is being installed tomorrow, at 2.00pm – unless himself is winging his way to Adelaide instead…

And in my spare moments between all of the above, I Rifted, and have almost got my newest creation, Belezza to level 15 (it should be spelt “Bellezza”, but that was already taken, however the Italian – English dictionary also recognizes the single “l” version) It means “Beauty” 🙂 I have already transferred one of the Laethys girls across to make room for her, and with a bit of luck (and a clearer head than I have at time of writing!) I’ll get her across, and into the Guild, tonight.

Weigh-in this morning was starting to look more promising 🙂 Down to 113.5kg, two points down from yesterday, and I had to start a new sheet of graph paper! (I keep a visual record of my weight loss on graph paper – it looks much more gratifying, seeing it in a nice, steady, downward path on graph paper, than it does just writing down a list of weight numbers! 😉 )

Anyway, stay tuned for all the latest about Julian’s mother, Christmas, Birthday and Anniversary plans, whether my broken screw got fixed, and if my weight has gone up, down, or… stayed exactly the same, as it does occasionally – or should I perhaps say “all too often”!? 😉 News at nine…

Is what himself and I both sound like tonight. We both have a very nasty summer cold. Because it’s our wedding anniversary coming up this Sunday, we both, simultaneously, came up with the idea of giving the other one a cold, as an early anniversary present – wasn’t that romantic? 😉 He’s sneezing, and I’m shivering… and we both feel like something that even a dog wouldn’t eat, even if it was starving!  😦

That said, we decided to make our “surgical strike” on the Christmas Presents today, instead of tomorrow, because the replacement oven is being delivered tomorrow morning… at the same time that himself is supposed to be picking up my favourite eldest daughter, who is coming over tomorrow, instead of Friday, because on Friday I’m having my loose screw fixed. Errr.. that is, I have an appointment at the Prosthodontist to have the broken (and loose!) screw in my bottom implant bridge repaired. So you can see that this wunnerful cold may have contributed… just a little, to our uncharacteristic state of confusion Hopefully the oven will arrive very early – before himself goes off to get Lee… I can’t let the delivery people in because they have to bring it in through the loading bay, which means that someone has to be able to go down and manually open the roller doors – which I can’t. *sigh* You know, when people ask me how I am, I nearly always say “Oh, muddling along, as usual 🙂 ” This week, I’m afraid we’re both “muddling along”, though not “as usual” (it’s only me wot does that 😉 )

Well, we took off for the “surgical strike” just after lunch – around 12.30pm? – and the place was sheer bedlam! We mostly park over in the Valet Car Park, as it’s usually much quieter, more “refeened”, less stress getting the wheelchair out of the car, and you don’t have to fight for the next to last parking spot this side of the black stump. Usually! I have never seen the place so stuffed to the gunnels (that’s “gunwales“, to you land lubbers 😉 ), ever! There were cars everywhere! It was total and utter chaos! Until we got inside, and then it was just’business as usual’. It might be because Christmas is getting very close, but the crowds of shoppers didn’t seem… “Christmas-y” enough, if you know what I mean? They were almost blaze… Anyway, we did our “surgical strike”, and got presents for all the Adelaide people, including himself’s mother and sister (she doesn’t live there anymore, but she’ll be there this Christmas), a combined Birthday/Christmas present for my favourite youngest daughter (sorry Kate! ) the present for my favourite oldest daughter had already arrived (teehee!), a present for Mr. Thorne (Kate’s husband), a Birthday and a Christmas present for Wolfie (Lee’s husband), and… even something for himself! 🙂

I was the only one who missed out on not being gottened a present (yet!) 😦

But we were well pleased with ourselves… feeling as rotten as we did, yet still managing to get through the crowds, the pressure to buy (from certain places which shall not be named for fear of giving secrets away – “Spoilers!” 😉 ) and for sticking through it all until we’d finished! We came home to a well earned, and well deserved, cup of tea! Then we collapsed.

Weigh-in this morning was… meh! Well, I did go down – one point, to 113.7kg, but I had expected more… Tomorrow should be better though – I missed out on morning and afternoon tea today, though I did have an iced coffee outside DJ’s this afternoon. I didn’t drink much of it though – it was supposed to be black coffee with a dash of skinny milk, but it didn’t really taste like skinny milk, so I didn’t have more than about five little sips of it… We shall see what we shall see in the morning. If I go up, I may consider suing them for not using skinny enough milk! 😉

So, tune in again this time tomorrow, to see if a certain cafe outside DJ’s will get an invitation to court, and if our colds are any better. Anyone want to place bets on whether the replacement oven will arrive before or after himself has gone off to pick up my favourite eldest daughter? The answers to all these questions, and more, will await you here, tomorrow night! 🙂

This has been, what a rare mood I’m in… No! Sorry, that’s from Brigadoon (the musical – another one of my (many) favourites!) 🙂 However, it has been quite a day! After breakfast I started off checking my Auctions and Minions – I made about 68 platinum on the Auctions, and my Minions once again came home with far too much Dimension baggage… not that I’m complaining about that, it’s just that I have nowhere to store it all! The trouble is, you can’t by-pass the available Minion Adventures – ya has to take what’s offered ya! I suppose I could sell it, but if everyone’s in the same boat (and I suspect that a great many people are!), who’d buy it? Hmmm… perhaps “they’ll” start offering more private bank vaults? (for a price, of course! 😉 ) Anyway, all that done, and true to my word, I started the Great Christmas Card Scribble, whilst himself had a shower… I finished first… 😀 So then we went to print out the address labels… and they came out looking truly terrible!! The printing was thick, gluggy, smeary, almost illegible, and looking nothing whatsoever like my pretty, neat, legible, and highly artistic originals! Whatever could have gone wrong? we wondered. The text was still smearing and smudging five minutes after printing! On closer examination, we found… that it wasn’t the right sort of white, peel-off label paper for inkjet printers, it was clear self-stick label paper for laser printers! No wonder it looked terrible and kept smudging! So, too lazy to get the car out, himself had a second “morning walk” – down to Officeworks, on Doncaster Road, to get the right sort of white, peel-off label paper for inkjet printers. Printing run number 2… turned out beautifully, looking almost as good as my original Word document 🙂 The guillotining went well too, and before we knew it, the envelopes had been address labeled, stuffed, stamped, and had “Card Only” hand printed in their top left corner! 🙂 Except for one. Julian’s sister in Sydney – we still had her old address, so there was a bit of mucking around while we waited for her to SMS us back with the necessary details, so we made it our “lunch break”. Once we had the right details, another page of addresses was quickly printed, with the right address on her label this time, guillotined, label stuck on, the Card stuffed in the prepared envelope, and my part was done! Himself had himself a third walk for the day, and sauntered over the road to post the Cards… and so, promise kept! I said I’d get all the Christmas Cards in the mail by Tuesday (today) latest, and I did! 🙂

Then I could finally get back to Rift… Bluemyst was safe and sound on Faeblight after all, and I quickly took her up to level 15, in preparation for moving her… Maybe…. You see, in the process of getting her ready, and logging off to see who I could shuffle her with, I got just a teeny bit distracted… and created another character *cringe* So now, of course, I’m all interested in her… *sigh* I definitely have too many characters… Oh well, I don’t have to make up my mind straight away – and I’d really like some think music while I mull it all over 😉 I’ll go back and have another look at all of them this evening and see if I can come to a decision…

Weigh-in this morning was a lot better – down to 113.8kg Do you realise that when I get down to 112.0kg I’ll have lost 22kg since August 18th 2014, and be half way to my goal weight? By the time I’ve got to where I want to be, I’ll have lost a grand total of 44kg! I wonder if anyone will still be able to see me, or if I’ll have disappeared into a tiny shadow?! 😉 In another 4 months, if I keep going the same way as I am now… that’ll be the end of April 2015, or more likely early May 2015 (because February is such a short month) I’ll be (or should be!) 90kg…  (cue ripply harp music: *dream* *dream* *dream* : cut ripply harp music)

So tune in again tomorrow night to find out who, if anyone, I’ve decided to play Character Shuffle with, or if I’ve done a massive massacre, and purged a lot of the extraneous denizens from the alternate shards… and if the weight I was so pleased with this morning has gone up, down, or stayed exactly the same (again! grrrr!) 🙂