Drawn to a close. It was a good day today – I had my hair chopped off, really, really short! 🙂 It might make you do a bit of a double take at first, but I think it suits me, and that it looks good, and that’s the main thing! (Ahem! Perhaps it might also make me weigh a bit less now? 😉 No, I don’t really think that – but it’s a good theory though! 🙂 ) Then we spent the rest of the morning talking about the genetics – or possible genetic properties – of pigeons 🙂 I wish I could find my books on cat genetics… I think they’re unpacked – they’re either in the Library/Office, or the [dreaded!] “spare room” (read: “don’t know where to put this? Throw it in here and wait for a miracle!”) I’ll get himself to have a look later… who knows? It might be helpful – the principles would be the same though, wouldn’t they? I also did a bit of building in Rift, carrying on from the other day. I was proudly showing off how far I’d got, when I noticed that I’d put the staircase up to the first floor… ending in the side wall! Ooops! 😉 Rather than try to move the staircase (it was hard enough to find somewhere to put it in the first place!) I think I’ll e-x-t-e-n-d the house out a little there, making a nice balcony to overlook the pond at the foot of the hill. Yes, excellent save, Winter! 😉 After lunch, I went off to Faeblight to where my new girl Rivergold was… *wince* and created another character. I know, I know, but I can’t help it! I’m an altoholic! 😦 *sigh* I think I like her better than Rivergold, so she might be the one to move when she’s old enough… Her name is Bluemyst, and she’s currently level 12… and she has her “Merchant of Death” title already, too! 🙂 Oh dear! I just realised! I was in such a hurry to get her into Meridian (she’s a Defiant) after getting that title that I might have forgotten to bring her back from the shard I had to transfer her to to get the title! I think it was Hilol… You see, if you can’t find what you’re looking for on your own shard, like this merchant wot you’ve got to kill, you can temporarily transfer yourself to up to about six shards to look for him, and complete the challenge there. Then you’re supposed to return to your original shard… but I might have forgotten to go back. I think it was originally introduced just after we were given Dimensions to play with. People who do Dimension “tours” (go around looking at, and voting for, other people’s Dimensions (and yes, you can visit, and vote for mine if you like! *hint* *hint*)) …people doing Dimension “tours” might have read about a Dimension on another shard and want to go and have a look at it – so rather than force people to create a character on that shard, or transfer an existing character to that shard, just to look at a Dimension, we suddenly found ourselves with the ability to temporarily change shards… Crikey… I hope I haven’t stuffed things up…

By then it was after 3 o’clock, so I wandered off to the lounge room to read a bit, and do crosswords on my tablet (but I ended up just reading), and that was about the end of my usefulness for the day… well, afternoon, anyway. I know I said, a couple of posts back, that I intended to have the Christmas Cards in the mail by Tuesday – that’s tomorrow – and I still intend to do so! We have the sticky label paper on which to print the fancy addresses that I made, so while I’m head down tail up, scribbling furiously in 19 Christmas Cards, himself will be busy printing and guillotining the labels, which we will then carefully stick onto the envelopes, doing our level best to keep them straight. So the Cards should be ready to be mailed by early afternoon, and I will have stuck to my promise 😛

I went without morning or afternoon tea yesterday, in protest about my lack of any sensible sort of weight loss that morning, and I went without morning tea this morning (though I did have a small, fresh apricot for afternoon tea) This morning’s weigh-in proved without a doubt that the proof of the pudding is definitely in the not eating thereof! And I was down to 114.1kg! Hurray! (with apologies to Banjo Patterson:) “There was movement on the scales, for the word had got around, that Winter wasn’t eating morning tea…” – something along those lines, anyway 🙂 Oh, I hope that eating that apricot for afternoon tea isn’t going to make me go up again, or worse! stay the same! It was a very small apricot… and I didn’t eat the stone… (*anxious look*) Oh dear, I shall probably worry the weight off now… (good point! [makes note to self] “Worry more!”) 😉

So stop by tomorrow night – find out if Bluemyst is stuck in a foreign shard, or is back in Faeblight, and whether or not Winter did keep her word and get the Cards posted on time! Take a peek over Winter’s shoulder at the scales – see if that apricot has put her into damage mode because she didn’t lose any weight (or has stayed the same), or if the extra worrying has knocked a few extra grams off her stubbornly fat behind! 😉

Was what we ended up with this afternoon… unfortunately we didn’t get paid for it – well, not in real time money, anyway! 😉 We started off this morning, bright and early after a slightly belated breakfast (we sleep in until 8.15am on Sundays! 😉 ), and sallied forth to slay beast and foe in Telara. Actually, it was all pretty straight forward – the usual types of “fetch me that book that’s next to my left elbow” quests (i.e. pretty easy and pointless quests), and quests which required a fair bit of running around in circles for absolutely worthless gear rewards! I think that out of all the gear rewards we were offered today (and let’s face it, about 82% of the quests are gear rewards), I kept two – for “costume use only” (being leather, they weren’t suitable for my Class, anyway, but they looked quite good on, so I took them instead of what was actually being offered to me!), and only two were actually worth having. For the rest, I just picked the ones that sold for the most gold. So we trundled around, having quite an easy time of it, if the truth be known… until after lunch. We’d rescued this great big dude and brought him home to his daughter, the Princess, who’d been giving us such an easy time (even if we did have to do a lot of running around in circles) But did he give us an easy time of it? Nooooo! He wanted us to go into this big temple-type place that looked exactly like a clone of Sanctum, the Guardians Capital city, and kill just about all of the principal characters who live in the real Sanctum, all of whom are high level and as tough as nails! To make this task just a little easier, we also had to do battle with the dozens of flame guards and temple devotees! Still, all in a day’s work – we managed all of that, and I think both of us died once or twice. Then, just as we thought we’d be able to gallop home, hand in the finished quest and gain our reward, we’re told to go through a portal and kill the big boss who was waiting outside for us. Strangely enough, we both had a lot of bad feelings about this, but decided to give it a go, anyway. I mean, what was the worst that could happen to us, hmmm? Now this boss (a nasty big, huge, horrible dragon) had some sneaky and wikkid fire attacks. Not only did you have to bash him, you had to keep moving all the time in order to keep out of the way of his pink semi circular domes (which do you a heap of fire damage), flame sectors (truncated triangular areas doing even more fire damage), his fiery breath (talk about garlic!), and his claws and bite. Moving around, of course, means that you can’t cast spells – the movement “interrupts” these, so all you get is a few seconds when you can cast your worst at him while he’s “gathering all his resources”, then you run around like mad trying to stay alive until the next few seconds when you get your chance to hit him again. This is where being a Warlock comes in handy! 🙂 You get the chance to hurl all your DOTs (Damage Over Time) spells at him, plus if you’re also a Necromancer, like I am, you can get your pet to rush in and bite him on the ankles (it annoys the hell out of him, too! 😉 ) And if you’re as lucky as I am, your partner will be a Cleric who pretty much stands back, hurls his DOTs at the beast, and then hurls healing spells at you! I did die again here though, I was trying to run backwards away from his pink domes, and got out of range of the healing spells. My bad… Only cost 1 platinum at the Healer’s though 🙂 So anyway, in the end we got him (I really didn’t think we’d stand a chance!), and you know what? He fell on top of us!

After that, we went “home” to Margle Palace, handed the quest(s) in, grizzled a bit about the silly gear rewards, tidied ourselves up, and quit for the day. “A Good Time Was Had By All”, as they say in the classics – we made a bit of money, didn’t go up a level (close though, close!) and had a fun time. Roll on next Sunday – no, scratch that! Friday is December 12th, my favourite youngest daughter’s birthday, and it’s my favourite eldest daughter’s husband’s birthday on Tuesday, so that means we’ll be having the traditional Family Birthday Feast here on the Sunday (well, they will, I’ll just have my bar) We may have to call another day next week “Sunday” instead – I’ll see what himself thinks…

Weigh-in this morning made me furious. I stayed the same, 114.3kg I felt as though I was standing in a circular sealed room, slowly filling with water, and all I could do was tread water, not going anywhere! Everyone tells me I shouldn’t get so upset, there’s nothing I can do about it, it’s the heat, the humidity, and the medication, causing me to retain fluid. They don’t seem to understand that the fact that I can’t do anything about it is exactly what upsets me! I don’t like feeling helpless, and I hate feeling as though I’m seeing all my options slowly being whittled away… Damn it all, I just want to go away for a holiday, and ghod only knows when that’ll be possible!

Stay tuned tomorrow for more on my weight miseries, how the building project in Gloamwood Glen is progressing (it’s doing very well! I found my ladders, too! 🙂 ), and whether I’ve decided to do The Great Character Shuffle with Rivergold…

Nail polish. It’s the pale pearl, slightly off-whitish one – or at least that’s the colour I thought it was… but it’s not. It’s a terribly, terribly, terribly pale pinkish colour, with a sort of an opalescent shimmer in it, and I just don’t do pink, in any of it’s forms… (I do make an exception for the fuchsia shades though) 😦 Not. Happy. Jan! …and it’s so translucent that I had to put on three layers, instead of just the two that I used with the other one, and it’s now so thick that after almost two hours it still feels slightly tacky, and doesn’t really feel completely dry. So… one bottle of O.P.I. nail polish, pretty pale pink – only used once, free to a good home! Any takers?!

This morning I Rifted… I did a bit more house building – I now have the kitchen stove and chimney in, and the stone posts in all the outside corners (makes it look a trifle neater, and disguises the joints where the walls overlap a bit) Then I needed some ladders and/or scaffolding, which I knew I had, but I just didn’t (and still don’t!) remember where I’d put them, and had to go searching. I found two of the scaffolding bits, but I still can’t find the ladders – I know I had quite a few of them… I wonder if I’ve already used them elsewhere? I don’t think so though… I’ll have another look when I’ve finished this… Anyway, by the time I’d almost finished sorting out Cersie’s bank vaults (looking for the ladders) it was lunch time. I also did a bit of questing on Faeblight (the shard I started the new character, Rivergold, on the other day) bringing the new girl up to level 14… One more level and I can move her, if I decide to – I still haven’t made up my mind if I will or not. We’ll see… it’ll take more character shuffling around if I do, and it’s always a bit of a mess…

Tomorrow, of course, is our “Frolicking and Fossicking in Telara for Fabulous Fun” day, so I’d better make sure that Jademoss has somewhere comfortable to sleep tonight. The poor girl spent the night out on the streets in Choreburg last night because I couldn’t be bothered sending her off to one of her sisters’ houses. Guess I’d better get on with the new building in Gloamwood Grove. I’d call it “Gothic Grove”, but I don’t think it’ll end up being a very Goth sort of place… I could also call it “Gloaming in the Grove”, but I’ve set the time there permanently to 1.00pm – which I can change, and probably will, but I’ll leave it like that until it’s all finished. There’s nothing quite as awkward as trying to build a house in the dark! 🙂

I found my little Kanji “Winter” symbol – or at least Google tells me that it means “winter” – I hope it does mean that, and not something rude… I used to use it quite a lot, back when I used to make free web sets and stationery (you can see one of them in use here, under the deco on the far left), and I went looking for it today – Neither Julian nor I could find it anywhere in our very extensive archives, so I decided to Google it to see if I could find it again… and I did 🙂 So then I spent a very pleasant hour or so re-sizing it, colouring it, and generally playing around with it. Next time I decide to do a blog makeover, I’ll try to incorporate it into the graphics somehow… 🙂

After all of that, I went up to the lounge room to… read, and do my nails. I read for a bit before falling asleep, and only decided to do my nails at around 5.00pm. As I indicated above, I was not pleased, or impressed, with the result. I am just not a pink girl! Still, it’s on now, and until I can find a better colour, I’ll live with it – grudgingly. I believe that next week himself intends to make what he terms a “surgical strike” of all the Christmas shopping. Good! I shall go with him, and, if he’s given me his list, do a little shopping of my own! As well as look for another colour nail polish, or should I say polishes. Of course, then we have to wrap everything, set up the tree, gear up for Neale (son-in-law) and Kate’s (favourite youngest daughter) Birthday on December 12th – the day I also go to get my broken screw fixed… The broken one? In my lower bridge? Tsk! I did tell you about it, ages ago! 😉

Weigh-in this morning was much more betterer – 114.3kg! Keep it up scales, and you and I could end up best friends! 😉 No more messing about with the same weight for days on end, no more “ups” – only “downs”, from now on, right? 🙂

So tune in again tomorrow night – find out if I’ve redesigned my blog page 😉 make bets on whether my nail polish is still intact, and see if I’ve become best friends with my scales, a distinct possibility if I’ve gone down again, because it’ll mean that they’re still behaving themselves! 😉 See you then…

At me from the shelf above my monitor… That’s right, another of “those” occasions when I couldn’t think of a suitable title for tonight’s missile missive… It’s a cute little white ceramic cat with blue bead eyes, sitting waving his right paw at me – I’m very fond of him, so it’s a wonder that I haven’t incorporated him (her?) into one of my passwords, like… No, I’m not going to tell you, you’d probably only try to guess the password which then might lead to certain… unpleasantness… Which brings up memories of the very early days of my BBS (Bulletin Board System), where one of my users had a really odd but also very effective password. A hacker (who shall remain nameless) decided to have a go at logging in as this user, presumably on a bit of a spying spree, and came within one letter (symbol, actually) of guessing it correctly! Hmmm… now that I think of it, I could, and probably should, start using that password myself now – it was never cracked, and even that very close call didn’t win any bananas! 😉 Most of us Sysops (Systems Operator/Ghod) went on little spying trips to other BBS’s, sometimes as ourselves, sometimes “incognito” 🙂 One particular BBS I used to visit “incognito” knew I was hanging around there, but didn’t know which user was actually me! It was great fun watching them accusing everyone except me, of being me! Ahh… nostalgia! 🙂

This morning while himself was picking up my favourite eldest daughter, I did a bit of Rifting – no building, just questing… with yet another new character on a different shard… Did quite well for myself, too! There’s an Achievement and a title you can earn yourself for killing a certain merchant outside the gates of Meridian, the Defiant capital. You really need to be about level 13 to be successful, and not only was I only level 11, but I was a Guardian, over in Defiant terrirory, and couldn’t risk getting too close to the gates of Meridian in case the guards spotted me… Well, I galloped up the road on my trusty black tiger cat, and… there was the merchant! I did some quick calculations – you can, usually, manage to knock off mobs two levels higher than yourself, when they’re just ordinary mobs, but this guy was a lot tougher than your usual mobs because an Achievement and a title were involved, but I decided to risk it. Man, was he a tough cookie! I did wear him down an kill him in the end… but he killed me too! I wasn’t sure if I’d get the Achievement and title because I hadn’t seen who died first, but he must have, because I’m now known as “Rivergold, Merchant of Death” – cool, eh? 🙂

Then Lee arrived, and she showed me some cut scenes from her latest favourite game, “Dragon Age Inquisition”, and also some of the Character Creation functions. I would kill for Rift to have a Character Creation platform like that one! Utterly fantastic! Move different parts of the face – nose, eyes, mouth – like soft plastic to get the look you want. Eye colours beyond real, with inner and outer iris colours, making for some truly superb combinations. The only place it fell down – badly, actually, was in hair “movement” and texture. Ah well, can’t have it all, I suppose… After fiddling around with that for a bit we went up to the lounge room and watched a new episode of “Agents of Shield”, and about three of “Person of Interest”, where they killed off one of the best characters! 😦 *cry* I’ll miss her 😦 But boy, is the plot thickening, or what?! Great show… I can’t wait to see what happens next… (but then, as my mother used to say, “What are you going to do instead?!” Kill joy! 😉 )

Weigh-in this morning was quite a disappointment – I was forced to growl at the scales “I’ll get the sledge hammer!”, because they said I was at 114.5kg again, the same as yesterday Oh well, only another 5 days on these ruddy pills… maybe then I’ll start losing weight again, properly! (like about 2 or 3 points per day) S’not fair…

Maybe I’ll feel better tomorrow, after I do my nails again – the last lot of polish is starting to chip and flake off, and make me look as though mice have been nibbling the ends of my fingers. I think I’ll use the other nail polish this time, the creamy, off-white, pearly colour, and see how that looks…

So tune in again tomorrow night and find out if my nails look human again, or if my fingers have taken on a creamy, off-white, pearly colour where I’ve missed the nails and got the skin instead… and if the [insert rude word here] scales are behaving themselves nicely, and telling me that I’ve started going down again – or whether I’ve had to take the sledge hammer to them, after all! 😉

When I had to ditch so many of my favourite tops… Some of them were just sort of “ordinary, do the shopping in” type tops, some of them had only been worn once or twice, because they were “Sunday best”, and we don’t often have, or go to, occasions when one does wear one’s “Sunday best” 😦 It took for ever to go through them all – I didn’t realise that I had so many clothes! (no wonder we had trouble putting the dry cleaning away!) But… everything went… well, not quite everything… there were a couple that I kept – there was one with cats on it that I’d never worn at all – it even had the shop label still on it… but it was too cute, and I thought that I’d keep it, as a memento of how big I used to be 😉 There were another couple I saved, too – because they were brand new too, and had never been worn – but they’d been a titch too small when I got them, so I want to try them on again and see if they fit now, or if they’re too big – in which case I’ll probably shed a few more tears as they go, as well, because they’re very pretty. My goodness, my side of the wardrobe looks like an empty cave now! However I’m not going to go out and re-fill it again, just yet – I still have a l-o-n-g way to go. Put it this way… I’ve lost 20kg since August 18th – when I lose another 2kg, I’ll be sitting on 112kg – and only half way to my goal weight. I’d like to get to 112kg before the New Year, but I don’t think I’ll be in the race to make it… however I do plan on being into double figures instead of three figures by the end of January. That, I’m pretty sure I can do! 🙂

I did a bit of Rifting after that – questing, not Dimension building, this time, but I didn’t get too much done – I was too distracted after the ransacking of the wardrobe… I made a couple of alterations to the Christmas Card List – I had two more names to add, so it’s not 17 people left on it, it’s 19 people left on it I debated whether or not to start scribbling in the Cards, but decided against it – yep, I was still too distracted (Hey! You try throwing out just about all your clothes, except for what’s on your back, and not be distracted! 😛 ) So… that was the afternoon pretty much frittered away… I went up to the lounge room to read, reached the end of my book and… it was a stupid ending! Yes, I realise that it was a “hook” for the next book in the series – I seem to remember the one before it ending in much the same way, only this one was breathtakingly inane! It goes something along the lines of: She: “You don’t like me because you never look at me!”, He: “Yes I do, but you deserve better than to be swept off your feet in the middle of a desert – I plan to do better” He: plants a kiss on her forehead and forces himself to step away from her. End of book. I mean… What??!!! What a wussy ending!! Now I have to wait for the next book to find out what happens next (no folks, it’s NOT a Mills & Boon romance – it has fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, chases, escapes, true love, etc…) I absolutely hate buying what I think is going to be a trilogy… and then a year or so later finding out that the author has just released a 4th book… and a couple of years after that, a 5th! (a bit like George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones!) Usually, if I know there are more books to follow, I won’t buy them until I read the blurb “… in the exciting conclusion to the xxxx series, by xxxx!” then I know that I’m going to get them all in one fell swoop.

Weigh-in this morning was very pleasant… It seems that keeping the sledge hammer next to the Cat Carry Cage under the desk is working! 🙂 Down to 114.5kg this morning! Hopefully it’ll be down even more tomorrow, when favourite eldest daughter will be over (so no Rifting tomorrow, I guess 😉 )

I might scribble in some Cards tomorrow morning before she gets here, but then again, I might not 😉 So tune in again tomorrow night to find out if I scribbled, or if I fiddled with Rift or graphics… Whether I went down a little, or a lot… or if I went tragically up, instead! The answers to these questions, and more, will be waiting here for you… 🙂

Turn out as I expected. I had been expecting to go and start the mining of the wardrobe soon(ish) after breakfast, however himself declared a public holiday for me, until lunch time anyway, as he had some VIW (Very Important Work) to do with some sort of a spreadsheet for the Body Corporate. Very well, thinks I, I shall go and start building an abode for Jademoss in Gloamwood Glen, and off I sauntered… The work actually progressed quite well – I got the greenstone tile base done, some retaining walls, ‘coz it’s a very steep block, and the ground floor’s outer walls and windows put up. By then it was getting fairly close to lunch time, so I muddled around a bit longer, putting in some rather attractive and stylish concrete steps, down to the pond at the bottom of the block. Well, actually I didn’t get the steps all the way down, but it’s only a short(ish) jump from the end of the steps to the ground – not even enough to break one’s neck, or anything, and there I left it. Lunchtime came and went, and we had our cup of tea… and just as I was starting to get up to go and start on the wardrobe, the phone rang. From the Body Corporate. So I sat down again and played a couple of games of solitaire while I waited for himself to get back. And then I played a few more games… and a couple more. Then I started over from the beginning and played them all again, and by this time, the dragon was beginning to wake… (and as any Game of Thrones fan can tell you, you don’t want to wake the Dragon, do you! 😉 ) You’d think, wouldn’t you, that knowing it was going to be a long and complicated phone call, that I might have been told ‘This will probably take a while – sorry dear!’, in order to keep peace and harmony in the household, rather than leaving me twiddling my thumbs. I didn’t want to go back to Rift, because as sure as eggs get broken to make an omelette, I’d no sooner start on something and it’d be ‘Come on love, time to do the wardrobe!’ Ditto graphics.. ditto anything else worthwhile, except playing solitaire. By this time, smoke was beginning to trickle out of the Dragon’s nostrils, and it was very much awake. In more than mild annoyance, I stomped off to the lounge room to read – [insert very rude word here] the wardrobe! Needless to say, the wardrobe did not get cleaned out today, it’ll get done tomorrow, straight. after. breakfast. *sigh*

There’s a beautiful electrical storm raging outside at the moment – lightning flashing, thunder rumbling, and the rain is pouring down! 🙂 I LOVE thunder storms! 🙂 We’ve pulled the blinds down (we pull our blinds down to be able to see out as the strings for pulling them up are on the wrong side of the room to be able to get to them easily) and turned off most of the lights here in the Den, so as to be able to see the storm better – at the moment I’m typing this in semi-darkness (and making lots of typos because of it! Let me know if I’ve missed correcting any!) I wish we had more thunder storms… 🙂

Last night Jademoss spent the night at “Inside the Icehouse” in Icewatch Outpost, where she was able to have a nice hot bath and some delicious lentil stew for dinner, before retiring to bed. I had to laugh though – as I told you earlier, you don’t wake up in the Dimension, you wake up where you were when you entered it. This morning when I went to wake her, she was lying, sound asleep, in the middle of the road outside the Banking Chambers in Choreburg, the manufacturing section of Draumheim! 😀 She wasn’t fazed though, got straight up and checked her Minions! 😉

Weigh-in was a lot better this morning! (I must remember to keep that sledge hammer close by… maybe stick it under the desk bench next to Flipper’s Cat Carry Basket… ) Anyway, I’d gone down to 114.7kg – 2 points down. Hopefully tomorrow it’ll be even better (remember, I still have the sledge hammer, scales!)

So look in again tomorrow night – find out if the wardrobe finally got denuded of its over sized clothing; whether I got any more of the Gloamwood Glen House done (I must think of a better name for it! Any suggestions?), and if keeping the sledge hammer nice and close and handy got the scales to behave a little better for me, making my weight go down a bit (or a lot!) more… 😉

I got my first Christmas Card today… from old family friends, and it’s funny, you know, but I had just been wondering if they were still alive, and hey presto, a Christmas Card arrives from them. I guess the Great Ceiling Cat sent me the answer to my musings… 🙂 I’m glad though, because they’re really nice people, and I haven’t seen them since Mum died, in 2007…

I Rifted this morning, plotting and planning my scheme for urban development… I still haven’t made up my mind about who will live where, or just how I’ll move things around without the help of a usable Dimension Toolbox addon – the houses might even have to wait until someone else decides to write a working version of the currently unworking one 😦 In the meantime, I took Jademoss to stay overnight at her sister Wyntercat’s “Hobbit Manor”, in Anywhere. The house is finished, but the garden is still being worked on. Actually, that’s not quite true – although the house has two bathrooms, and two toilets, it doesn’t have a bath or a shower… In fact most of my so-called “finished” houses don’t have them either… I guess that means that they’re not finished, after all… *sigh* Back to the drawing board… Actually, one finished (though sparsely furnished) house does have a very nice bathroom, with a beautiful big semi-circular bath, and all mod cons! Visit Mossrose’s “Inside the Icehouse” in Icewatch Outpost to have a look! It took me forever to hang the floral drapes across the bathroom door in a double straight line, too! I shudder to think how totally impossible it would have been to hang them without the original old Toolbox (which was still working back then)! I really should keep on checking back at Curse to see if a new version is available yet… and leave a lot of “suggestive” messages about it on their Forum (I presume they have a Forum?) Well, I just went and had a look… No, there’s no new version yet, though it was originally uploaded in January this year… and no, there’s no Forum visible, unless it’s a Registered member feature. I’ll go and register later, and see if that produces a Forum for me to grizzle and complain in…. 🙂

After lunch I got out last year’s Christmas Card list. There were 32 names on it… now there are 17 🙂 And because my handwriting has deteriorated so much (due to me seldom using it except to madly scribble notes on my desktop notebook – things like unusual names I might try out for a new character, endless lists of mysterious numbers, which are in fact RGB colours, lists of Fonts to use on some project or other… which get scrawled down so quickly, usually when I’m still looking at the screen instead of what I’m writing – well, it’s actually a wonder that it’s still legible!) Anyway, because my handwriting is so messy these days, I use Word to design a name and address label with a Christmas ornament or decoration on it, and print them all out on peel-off label sheets… which we then stick onto the envelope. Besides, my handwriting always slopes up, instead of going in a straight line… So that’s the Christmas Card List done. Now I just have to scribble a quick note inside the Cards, which I intend to do on Thursday, get Julian to print and guillotine the labels (Friday?), bung ’em on the envelopes (Monday!), and post them. Anyway, I aim to have them in the mail by next Tuesday, latest! 🙂

By the time I’d finished all that, it was too late to go through my wardrobe, so I still have that chore to look forward to tomorrow morning Still, it shouldn’t take too long – it’s not as though I can stop and examine every second item, saying  “Oh, I love that top – I think I’ll keep it!”, because I wouldn’t be able to wear them again even if I did! Sometimes, one just has to be ruthless! 😉 If it’s an XL, it goes! End of story!

Weigh-in this morning was a bit of an anti-climax… Yes, it was the same again – third day in a row at 114.9kg! I’ll be somewhat stroppy if it’s the same again tomorrow, or if it goes up… I deserve a weight loss! I’ve worked hard for it, and I’ve damned well earned one, scales, so don’t you dare tell me I’m still at 114.9kg, or higher, tomorrow, or I’ll… I’ll… get the sledge hammer! Or cry… well, maybe snivel a bit, anyway…

So stay tuned tomorrow, folks, to see if Winter did actually go through her wardrobe, and to see if the scales are still intact, if they happen to give her bad news… Did she snivel, or did she not? Is there room to fit a small pony in her wardrobe, or only enough room to swing a cat? We’ll see… 😉

Black, so I decided to change it 🙂 Do you like the new decor? 🙂 Today was quite a good day – had my hair done this morning, and cut quite a lot shorter at the back – I like it, I think I look better without bits of hair sticking out around my neck… I also decided that since Rift doesn’t have Inns, as such, that I would try to create cosy homes for my girls to retire to after a hard day’s work (so to speak) In WoW (World of Warcraft), there were Inns where you could run upstairs, lie down on a bed, go to “sleep”, and logout. And you’d “wake up” there next time you logged on, too!  It was fun, but many’s the time when you’d just lie down on the bed  to go to “sleep”, and someone else would suddenly materialise on top of you, having just logged on and “woken up” 🙂 So anyway, Rift doesn’t have any of that, but we do have our own Dimensions, and we can enter our Dimension, lie down on a bed, “sleep”, and log straight out. Of course, you don’t wake up in bed in the Dimension, you wake up in the same place you were when you entered your Dimension… So… although I have an average of three Dimensions per girl, not all of them are finished enough to go and have a nice lie down in. This will be remedied toot sweet (as the French say), and I shall start whisking the girls home after their long, arduous days of questing and fighting nasties, to first a nice bath, then a banquet in the dining hall, and finally to a nice comfy bed, before I log them out… The Minions can take care of the cleaning and washing up… 😉

So that’s what I started doing this afternoon, and shall probably continue with tomorrow, but then I remembered that I was going to look for a couple of Photoshop filters that I’d been missing – “Kaleidoscope” and “Seamless Border 2”, by Mehdi – and after locating, downloading, and installing them, I thought that since I was already in Photoshop, it seemed silly not to do a bit of work… and you’re looking at the result of that work right now! 🙂

Actually, tomorrow looks like being a busy day – I have to go through my wardrobe and remove all the “falling off me” clothes, and get them ready to go off to St. Vinnies… They’ve all been dry cleaned (cost us a fortune!) so now they just need to be gathered up and taken off… and all of a sudden, I’m going to have heaps of room in my wardrobe again! It’s a shame, really – some of the clothes are very nice, and have only been worn once or twice – but they’re no use to me now, and I have absolutely no intention of putting the weight back on again, ever!

After I’ve dealt with the clothes, I have to get out the Christmas Card list, and the Christmas present list, and start working on those. You know, every Christmas we send out around about 32 Christmas Cards… and we get about 4 back! Not going to happen this year! This year I’m “culling” everyone from the list who didn’t send us a card last year, or the year before! Of course, all the Adelaide mob will get one, and the Israeli chapter will get one, and himself’s sister in Sydney… but the rest? Let me just say that we’ll probably need less that 20 cards this year! *severe look at screen* So, if you haven’t sent us a card for the last two years (yes, you know who you are!), you have been warned! *another severe look at screen* 😉

Weigh-in this morning was pleasantly surprising… I was expecting to go up, as I’m back on the Provera for 10 days But I stayed the same, at 114.9kg, which I thought was rather good! 🙂 Of course, it remains to be seen what happens tomorrow… I shall probably go up, but at least I’ll have had two days of not shooting right up into the 115kg zone (which is probably be where I’ll be at tomorrow) *sigh* Say la vee, as the French say…

So call in again tomorrow night to see whether I have an almost empty wardrobe… and If I’ve culled about 15 or so people from the Christmas Card list, and made a start on the Christmas Present list (uuuhh… does anyone know how to wrap a pigeon? 😉 ) And if my weight went up… or down… or stayed the same, for the third day in a row… 🙂

Called Margle Palace, which is what we found when we arrived in Draumheim (please don’t ask me how to pronounce it!) this morning. Draumheim is the second of the three new areas/zones that opened up with the new expansion, and is (supposedly) for levels 62 to 63 (we’re both level 63) It’s reasonably large, and we’ve discovered a whole new major Hub called Margle Palace. In case you’re wondering, Hubs are where you get a lot of your quests, and where you might find a few Professional trainers and workbenches, depending on the size and importance of the hub. Major Hubs are where you’ll find the majority of your quest givers, your Class trainers, major merchants, banks, auction houses, professional workshops, and Profession trainers. They always have one or two Porticulums (think “Beam me up, Scottie!” transporters 🙂 ), and a hairdresser. Yes, a hairdresser! Where you can change just about anything about your appearance, depending on how much gold and platinum you want to spend – you can even change your sex! 🙂 When you first start out in Rift, you usually make the run to your Major Hub/capital city pretty quickly and “bind” your soul there, as it’s generally a more convenient place to go back to, with its banks, auction houses, merchants and trainers (for those with a World of Warcraft background, think “Hearthing” – for those without that background, think of it as clicking your heels three times, and saying “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home”, and viola, as the French say, you’re back in Kansas!) Sanctum is the Major Hub/capital of the Guardians, the Major Hub/capital of the Defiants is called Meridian. When you get to level 50, you can move on to another Major Hub called Tempest Bay, which is multi faction – it has everything that the other two Major Hubs have, and more, but it’s newer, more compact, and more interesting. Now, however, we’ve come to Margle Palace, and it’s gi-normous! I reckon, looking at the map, that it takes up a good three quarters of the entire area/zone! It’s so big that it has to have three or four (we haven’t really counted them all yet!) mini porticulums, to get you from one part of the palace to another (you could run to all those places, but it would waste too much time – and besides, not all the areas of the palace are safe…) It’s pretty mind boggling, to tell the truth! It’s going to take a l-o-n-g time to learn our way around it (by which time I hope we’ll be heading off to the third and final area of the new expansion – I’m not even sure what it’s called!) There’s one very strange area in this palace – if you stand too close to what looks like a bulbous jelly fish floating in mid air, you get bounced up into the sky… and bob up on the surface of the water! To go back, you just swim straight down, and end up falling (gently!) down to the ground. As I said… it’s mind boggling… 🙂

Anyway, we had a good, if occasionally confusing, run today. Himself died a couple of times (I didn’t! *smirk*), and went up about …. a third of a level? Leveling up starts to get painfully slow when you get to about level 50 or so… you can take “boosters” to help you level faster – and I admit that I did, to get my other girls to level 50 as quickly as possible – but since the expansion we haven’t bothered doing that… yet, anyway… We’ve been reasonably content to muddle along, picking the flowers (grass, actually) (NO! Not that kind of grass, grass grass!) as we go along… curing our own hides for sale on the auction house, and mining and smelting our own ores, also for sale on the auction house. And so another Sunday Traipsing Through Telara passed in relative harmony (I only yelled at him once or twice, I think…)

Weigh-in this morning was encouraging, considering that it’s getting closer to the time when my weight usually shoots right up for a couple of days… I clocked in at 114.9kg, so not quite low enough for me to consider myself “safe” in the 114kg zone, but encouraging, none the less. I seem to be shedding a kilo about every four to five days, which is good. I’ve lost almost 20kg since I started on August 18th this year… and I’m still not even half way! Waaaaa! Still, it’s a start… 🙂

So tune in again tomorrow night – find out if I’ve gone down a bit more, or if I’ve started on my hated and dreaded few days gain… Who knows what might happen tomorrow, eh? There’s always something different and new around every corner, and I, for one, want to know what it is! 🙂

Is the colour of one of the nail polishes that I got today! It’s by O.P.I. and actually called “Significant Other Color” (!!), but it’s a sort of a pale mauve-rose-pearl. The other one is also by O.P.I., and is a frosted(ish) palest, pale grey-ish colour – just enough grey in it so that it’s not a stark white. It’s called “Int’l Crime Caper” for some totally incomprehensible reason, and comes from their ‘Muppets Most Wanted’ Collection. Anyway, they’re both very nice, and I’m currently wearing “Significant Other Color” (two coats – no base, no sealer) – I’ll see how it lasts, and try the other one next time.

Yes, we went out early this morning, before it got too hot – we didn’t have to vote today because we’d already Postal Voted on Thursday (or was it Wednesday? I fergit…) I just wanted to look for some nice nail polishes… I was originally going to go to Priceline to look for nail polishes, but as we came in next to DJ’s, I went in there first, and got totally distracted by the number of fancy-smantzy scented candles they have out – no doubt for Christmas – and was so distracted that I ended up talking himself into buying one 🙂 It’s a double wicked one called “Galapagos”, by Glasshouse Fragrances, and is Kaffir Lime and Cocoa Butter scented. Very nice! 🙂 And then… we came home again 🙂

Once home, it was head down, tail up, shifting (eternally shifting, it feels like!) Dimension goods from one landing place to the next. B.E. (Before the Expansion), I used a very handy addon called ‘Dimension Tools’, which was essentially a tool to create co-ordinates which make copying, pasting, moving, scaling, and rotating easier and faster. The so-called “tools” (and I use the term loosely!) that come native with Dimensions are, well, useless… and time consuming, and totally user hostile. Unfortunately, with the advent of the expansion, Dimension Tools stopped working – as is to be expected with utilities and addons when a large update or expansion is enabled, so we were expecting that… What we weren’t expecting was that the writer of the addon decided that they weren’t interested in upgrading the older version, and we were left up the creek without a Dimensional paddle! After a short while, another ambitious person decided that they’d write their own version of a Dimension Toolbox, and, we thought, all would be well again. This new addon worked just fine, at first… well, it was a little “lumpy”, but it moved the things around… Lately however, it’s been getting a lot “lumpier”; jerkiness, the occasional error message telling you to close the program, that sort of thing. The errors started getting more frequent, and today, I couldn’t get it to do anything at all without the [insert very rude word] error messages. I’m really fed up! I can’t do anything useful or significant with the clumsy so-called tools available, and the two would-be addon writers seem to have given up on our only hope(s) of Dimension building (I wonder if their names are “Ben” and “Kenobi”? – after all, they seem to be our only hope(s) of managing Dimension construction and decoration!) Ah well, now I have two girls with all bags and banks full of Dimension items, and no way of placing them in “storage” that isn’t going to take many, many hours of dull, boring, tedious and eye straining work! 😦 Not. Happy. Jan!

Anyway, I fiddled with that until about half past three this afternoon, whereupon I gave up, went and washed my hands, and repaired to the lounge room to try out my new nail polishes – er… one of them. Not both. I think I did an OK job – been a couple of years since I bothered to do my nails, but I managed not to spill the nail polish into the grouting, and most of it stayed on my nails, and not on my fingers or the furniture… So I’ll count that as “job well done” 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was a bit boring – I stayed the same, at 115.3kg Disappointing, but them’s the breaks, I guess… Oh well, maybe I’ll be down tomorrow… Here’s hoping… 🙂

It looks as though we’re in for another fardling Labor Government – honestly, I really don’t know which of the two so-called “major” parties is the worst! They’re both bumbling, inept, lying, scheming, and couldn’t care less about the people they’re supposed to be governing, bunches of losers! I don’t know what the answer is (I wish I did!), I just know it’s neither Labor, Liberal, nor Green… Heaven help Australia, and Victoria in particular!

Tune in again tomorrow night, after our weekly bash around Telara, and find out if my weight stayed the same, or if it went up… or down. Join us for a wake for Victoria, because no matter who gets across the line, it won’t be good news for us, and, most importantly, find out if either of us went up another level in our Sunday rampage romp! 😉