I’m looking at an unlit candle… I think it needs its wick trimmed, something himself said he’d do, only it doesn’t look trimmed to me. We got this fancy, long handled wick trimmer when we got the candles (I had forgotten that we bought two, so I didn’t have to go out in the heat today to get another one! 🙂 Wasn’t that clever of me! 😉 ) The wick trimmer looks like a pair of long handled scissors, but the finger holes are on an angle to the scissor bit, and the base, or bottom, of the cutting edge is higher than the base, or bottom of the other side, the side that has the groove for the wick in it. You’re supposed, I think, to rest the thick part with the groove in it, flat against the candle, with the wick sitting (sort of) neatly in the groove – when you close (cut) with the wick cutter, it’s supposed to trim the wick off neatly at the correct length. Now, I don’t know if I’m just extra clumsy (possible), not doing it the right way (probable), or just too old to understand the question (many would say so)… but with the finger holes of the wick cutter on such a weird angle, and the base that’s supposed (I think!) to rest flat against the candle, I just… get it all wrong Julian seems to be able to do it, and he’s the klutz in the family… so why can’t I? *pout* Well, I just trimmed the wick, and as usual, managed to gouge the candle wax quite nicely – luckily the wax melts smooth again soon after lighting – and lit the candle, which produced no visible sooty smoke, so I must have done it correctly. And this time we’ll be more careful removing the last bits of soy wax from the only-painted glass when it’s finished…

This morning, pretty much straight after breakfast, I started work on my Dimension items overhaul… So far I have eleven separate holding “pens” for the different categories – two of them are “part 1”, and “part 2” of the same item, because even shrinking things down to their smallest size, I run out of room to store them, long before I run out of the number of items I can store in that particular holding area. I just had a brilliant thought! 🙂 (Sometimes I can be so clever that I even amaze myself! 🙂 ) I can…. go up! Build a second floor! Why didn’t I think of that earlier?! This morning I almost went cross-eyed stacking up 32 ruddy floor panels! I could have used them to create a second floor on which to store things! Of course, there is the very small problem of – what happens when I’m working on a Dimension, and I need to use those floor panels… I don’t keep that many floor panels just for their decorative properties…. Bother!  Maybe I’m not clever enough to amaze myself, after all! 😦 Back to the drawing board… *sigh* Oh well, looks like there’ll be more “part 1” and “part 2” Dimensions needed after all… I think I have two more spare…

Tomorrow, of course, will be our usual Sunday “Picnic in Telara”, or “How many nasties can you kill in four hours?” The only parts I’m not particularly looking forward to are the underwater bits… But there are also plenty of areas that are not underwater, so that’s OK 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was pleasing, to say the least… down to 119.1kg! Wouldn’t it be fantastic if I could get down under 119kg by Tuesday! It’s possible, but probably not likely… I shall do my best! 🙂 That would be 15.5kg in about 3.5 months… which isn’t too bad, I suppose (says she, very grudgingly!)

Anyway, tuned in tomorrow night for the next exciting episode of “Will she lose weight? Or will she drown in Telara…?” 😉

Ah, misery me! It was 35C today, and it’s not even summer yet! 😦 What’s it going to be like when it is summer?!  I think I shall have to do what I was always threatening to do when I was at school… I’ll have to stow away on the next ice breaker to Mawson Bay! Honestly, what good is summer, anyway? All it’s good for is getting all hot and sweaty for no particular good reason (personally I can think of at least – oh, half a dozen good ways to get hot and sweaty? and have an enjoyable time doing it! 😉 ) At least in winter if you get cold, you can always add more warm clothing… in the summer, when it gets hot, there’s only so many items of clothing that you can remove and still remain decent in public! *sigh*

If tomorrow is hot again, I’m staying home with the egg-nitioner on, but if it’s cool enough I’ll go shopping with himself… I used up all the nice candle I got from Dusk a week or so ago, and I must say I was quite disappointed when I found out (the hard, scratchy way!) that the black glass jar (which turned out in fact to be a very dark reddish purple!) was really only painted on, and scratched off in patches when we tried to clean the last vestiges of soy candle wax off it. So I want to get another candle – this time I’ll get a big ordinary type candle. Hopefully it’ll last a little longer than this last one didn’t, and at least we won’t be able to scratch off the pretty colour on the glass jar, like we have with this one. I shall complain to the people at Dusk, too! I would have expected much better quality for the price we paid for it!

This morning I struggled along sorting a few more Dimension items, and disposing of them in newly created “holding areas” (“A All Large Decorations”, “A All Kitchen Related items”, “A All Vegetation and Rocks”, and so on and so forth) It’s getting there, but it’s a long, slow, tedious process. So much for getting back to questing! Then my favourite eldest daughter arrived, and we had lunch, whilst I finished off the last of the Vegetation and Rocks that I had left to transfer to their new home. After a most welcome cup of coffee, we repaired to the lounge room and watched the remaining episodes of season two of Person of Interest. I think I’ve said before that it’s a good show, and the plot is quickly thickening, like properly cooked custard, or gravy 🙂 Next week she’ll have season three, and we can find out what happens to Elias, and Carter, and the rest of them. I’m also hanging out for the return of Orphan Black, which is about a gaggle of clones, who didn’t realise they were clones, but now they’ve all got together to try to find out why they were created and why they’re being killed off (well, that’s roughly what it’s about, but it’s complicated, y’know? 😉 )

I must also get himself to re-install our 2008 version of Eye Candy – if it doesn’t work with this version of Photoshop, the Alien Skin website says that people who have licensed copies of their filters can simply pay for an upgrade – much cheaper, too (can’t remember what it was off-hand – I’d have to go and re look it up again. If you’re really interested, and ask me nicely, I’ll go fetch, but if you’re not all that bothered about it, I won’t, OK? 🙂 ) I’m a trifle amused at myself – getting all interested (welllll… a little bit interested, anyway 😉 ) in getting into graphics again! I wouldn’t mind trying my hand at wallpapers…. now, there’s a thought! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was tres annoyment! Same as yesterday – 119.3kg *sigh* Looks like the gremlins are putting me through another bout of  “Let’s annoy the [rude word] out of Winter! Just for the fun of it!” for a few days! I really wish they wouldn’t… Oh Noes! I shouldn’t have said that!! Oh dear… now they’ll make me pay for admonishing them like that – they’ll make me go up again! *sob* What have I done to myself!? [flings back of hand to her forehead in dramatic gesture]

And with that heartfelt and passionate declaration, gentle readers, I shall leave you all to wait, with bated breath, for the next installment of “The Trials and Tribulations of a Desperate Dieter!” – same time, same place! 😉

I have had a most productive day today, for a change! I started work this morning on trying (“trying” being the operative word!) to organise all my Dimension stuff. I used to have it all nicely divided up between several of my largest Dimensions, e.g. “All Plants, Trees and Rocks”, “All Kitchen related items” (food, plates, cups, goblets, etc.), “All Building Materials”, etc., etc., etc… Then I started “shuffling” various characters around, and to prevent “accidental losses” of Dimension stuff due to oversights, I decided to collect everything into one central point, namely my poor, long suffering Dimension looking-after girl, Cersie. I still have nightmares about trying to fit everything into her personal Bank vaults, even after opening up every available Bank vault, and filling her up with the largest backpacks that credits could buy, it was still too much… bits and pieces fell out and had to find alternative homes, and this is why I was trying to organise it all again today. I persevered for a while, then gave it up as a bad job and went looking for yet a “better” theme (here).

One of the main problems I have with these themes is that (a) I hate writing my blog on a white “page” – if I want white pages, I’ll use Word, and print it out on white paper, thank you very much! (b) I like to be able to pick and choose which font will give me the best effect – and let me tell you, there are precious few fonts available in WordPress! (says she, who is an incurable fontaholic with over 2000+ fonts to her name!)(er.. that includes dingbats and other decorative fonts, as well as ordinary and decorative writing fonts), and (c) I like some sort of graphic “header”, to set the mood… there are also precious few Themes that have header graphics, and there ain’t much choice there, either!

So, I decided to make my own. Back to my up until now sadly neglected Photoshop. First I did some research on how big to make these headers (they’re all different sizes!), so then it was a matter of finding which Theme I liked enough to make a personalised header for. This is the one I chose (it’s actually the same Theme as I’m using for “The Adventures of Darth Carla”, only with a personalised header instead of the one it comes with, and different colours 😉 ), and the header you see at the top of the page is the one that I made. Do you like it? 🙂

Since working with Photoshop over the last two days, it’s been niggling me that something seemed to be…. missing. It somehow didn’t feel the same… yes, I know it’s a newer version than the one I used for so many years making free web sets and free stationery for Outlook Express and Incredimail, but…. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it – until I wanted to make some changes to a pattern I had made and was experimenting with. It then dawned on me that what was missing were my wonderful dont-leave-home-without-them plug-ins, my Eye Candy (Alien Skin) and my Blade Pro! Hmmm… I wonder where they are, and if they’ll even work with this version of Photoshop? We shall look into it….

Himself has gone off to parts unknown to pick up and give a good home to yet another piece of C64 hardware (I can’t remember what it’s called, off the top of my head, and he’s not here to ask, so you’ll just have to sit there, chewing your nails, and wondering what on earth it could be, that’s taken his fancy so! 😉 )

When I finish this I shall get back to Rifting a bit, I think… My Minions should have finished their 8 hour runs that I sent them off on this morning, but I’d like to actually get a bit of questing in for a change! My favourite eldest daughter will be over tomorrow, and I dare say that after lunch we’ll spend most of our time up in the lounge room watching episodes of Person of Interest and Agents of Shield, which I am most anxious to catch up with! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was very pleasing… I should be right in the middle of my usually out of control upward moving Provera spike, but I actually went down to 119.3kg! I was pretty chuffed! (…or maybe it’s because I missed out on morning tea yesterday morning? If so, I must try to do that more often! 😉 ) Hopefully I’ll go down again tomorrow…. (hope, hope, hope…)

Anyway, tune in again tomorrow night for all my latest adventures, graphics-wise, weight-wise, Rift-wise, comment-wise and gossip-wise! 🙂 Don’t be afraid to leave me a comment or three to let me know what you think of my header… 😉

Not being able to make the text smaller. I just felt it was way too big. So let’s try this Theme for a day or two – see how it beds in! 🙂 I’ll just as likely change it again in a few days…

I worked on my new bookmarks desktop this afternoon – himself found a free WYSIWYG HTML editor, which works – after a fashion 🙂 You remember how I said that I used to use a program (which wasn’t free!) called Front Page, and how it was great for placing elements of the page, layout, etc., but used the most execrable HTML? Well, this program, called Kompozer, makes Front Page’s HTML look like the very best HTML programming ever written by a really top notch web designer! I kid you not! 🙂 It was certainly good enough for me to set my page up correctly, but after a few vain attempts to correct the HTML manually, I gave up. I don’t want to know. As long as the page looks right, and works properly, I don’t care! Maybe one of these days when I’m feeling particularly masochistic I might venture into the dark side of HTML again and attempt a clean-up, but I can think of lots of things I’d rather be doing… like… staring glassy eyed at the TV screen, voluntarily watching a sports program (hint: that will happen when hell freezes over, the seas all dry up, and we’ve evolved wings to fly with, and a tail, for fun!) 🙂

I didn’t have much time for Rift today – we picked up my two rat poison (Warfarin) scripts from Doctor B., and by the time we got away from there it was almost time to head straight off to Bounce for my exercise class (of 1! Me!) My “trainer”, Mr. Anderson, was well pleased with my progress – so much so that he’s given me a tougher? harder? less stretchy? Thera Band (the great long piece of elastic-y stuff that I use for stretching exercises, and pulling my arms out of their sockets 🙂 ) plus two new leg exercises designed to strengthen my upper leg and thigh muscles (something tells me I’m going to have sore thighs tomorrow ) All in all I’ll be doing five exercises in cycles of 20 per individual exercise, three times each. He says it should take me about 35 minutes 😦 I had to laugh though, he’s just come back from a nice long holiday…. getting up each morning at 5.30am and taking children for running and exercise-y type things all day! I said “That’s not a holiday! That sounds like hard work!”, but apparently it’s his idea of a good, fun time *shrug* Some people are really weird! 😉

We had a nice late lunch when we got home, and a very welcome cup of coffee, but I missed out on my morning tea (let’s hope that shows up in my weigh-in tomorrow morning! 🙂 ) Then I got stuck into my bookmarks desktop thingy, and worked pretty much at that until this evening when himself had to go off to (yet another) Body Corporate Committee meeting. By the time he left for that I had just about had enough of computer-ie things, so once I got the page looking right, and working properly, I retired to the lounge room to read – and that was my day that was! 🙂

Weigh-in this morning could have been better, but considering the fact that I’m right in the middle of my Provera fluid retention week, I guess you could call it “good”, i.e. I was the same as yesterday, 119.5kg. Hopefully I’ll start going down again tomorrow, but I won’t be too surprised if I don’t

I’m afraid that you (collectively) weren’t quite good enough for me to take a screenie of my new bookmarks desktop to show you what it’s like – well, it was either that you weren’t good enough, or it might have been that I was just too tired of working on it – whichever comes first/delete whichever excuse does not apply! 😉 Stay tuned for all the latest news, gossip, and inconsequential chatter coming your way tomorrow night! 🙂

Since I did any graphics work… so today, I decided that I’d had my desktop “Winter’s Bookmarks” for quite long enough, thank you! (about… 4 years?) and that it was time to haul out Photoshop and make a new one… [insert hysterical laughter here] Well, you know how they say that you never forget how to ride a bicycle? Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to ride a bicycle… a horse? yes! I was a very good horse back rider – after all, they have a nice, solid post on each of their four corners so that they’re easy to balance on… but bicycles?? Let me just say that I used to fall off exercise bicycles that were bolted to the floor! So, did I remember all my smart Photoshop moves from way back then? Nahhhh…. I floundered. I got frustrated. I got annoyed. And I felt really silly. But, I persevered, and I think I’ve come up with a fairly nice, if somewhat “noir”, bookmarks desktop. IF I can work out how I moved the tables over to the right. I know it’s something to do with the transparent filler .gif I used for spacing just about everything, but the trouble is, I can’t see them, where they’re placed, or how big they are. I used to use a terribly badly behaved program called Front Page. It wrote truly horrible HTML, but it was a fabulous WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, and it was easy enough to do all the placement and visual editing first, then go in and tidy up or correct its woeful HTML. I used to have a copy of Front Page. I probably still do have a copy of Front Page. But, as with everything else that you really, really need, or want in a hurry, I don’t know where the [rude word] it is, amongst all our programs and files. *sigh* Himself is having a go at hand editing it (I think), so I’ll just have to see what he can do, or find myself another not-too-expensive WYSIWYG HTML editor (does such an animal even exist?!)

So, what else happened today… I managed to track down all the collective Dimensions that my girls have, was semi-tempted to have a go at creating a new Dimension in one of the newer areas, like the Crypt in Stonefield, which is gi-normous! but… wasn’t quite tempted enough, so I went back to gathering Autumnal stuff for the current World Event for a bit, but all of those quests are dailies which don’t take long to complete, and you can only do them once a day, which is a bit dreary… It was about then that I thought it might be a good idea to change my bookmarks desktop – full circle. Once I’ve finished writing this, it’ll be back to collect all the goodies that I hope my Minions will have brought in (they usually do – himself has been making quite a killing on the Auction House with goods mostly brought in by his Minions!) I doubt that I’ll have much time to anything sensible in Rift tomorrow – I have to go to the Doctor to get repeat scripts, for which we’ll probably be kept waiting for up to 3/4 of an hour (sometimes more! ) She’s a very good Doctor, but 3/4 of an hour to say “Hi Doctor B., I need another script for my Warfarin!”? I guess that’s what happens when you go to a really good Doctor… Then practically straight after that I have my Bounce session (exercise thingy) in the afternoon. I don’t expect we’ll be home before 3-ish, especially if we have to stop off on the way home to do a bit of shopping… Never mind…

Weigh-in this morning was better, I went down to 119.5kg again – where I was the day before yesterday. It seems I’m entering the Provera see-saw fluid retention business again – at least until I stop taking it on the 10th, anyway. Oh well, as long as I don’t go back over 120kg again, I’ll be reasonably happy (though I’d really love to break the 119kg barrier over the weekend! 😉 )

Anyway, that’s it for tonight – another short one for you 🙂 Stay tuned for all the latest, and if I get my bookmarks desktop done (with Julian’s help), and you’re all really, really good, I might (no promises, mind!) post a link to a screenie of it 🙂

Yes folks, it’s yet another “New Look” for the blog… Why? I don’t know… they say that a change is as good as a holiday, or something, don’t they? 🙂 How long this one will last is anyone’s guess – until I get bored with it, really, which might be tomorrow, or it might be next year (unlikely though!) Expect the colours to change on a regular basis – I just can’t seem to get the right colour combinations; mind you, I don’t know what they are yet, but I’ll know them when I see them, so until then, prepare to be challenged with some weird combinations 🙂

This entry will be a bit shorter than the last few (I heard that heartfelt sigh of relief from all of you from here!) because, quite frankly, I’m finishing too late, even when I start writing from the moment I hit the Den at 9.30pm! So! 😛 shorter from now on, unless I have a lot to say, that is – and when don’t I? Pray tell? 😉

Had my hair done this morning – looks very nice too… will have to get it done next Monday as well, as I have what may well turn out to be a very interesting appointment on Tuesday – I already have stage fright!

This afternoon I just… Rifted around a bit. It occurred to me that with all the character shuffling around I’ve been doing lately that I no longer have any idea as to who’s got what Dimensions – so I went through them all, one by one, and made a list. It seems that I’ve moved some of the girls with a few of the best Dimensions to other shards… Oh well, I have 4 newbies with blank slates (so to speak) where I can create new homes and furnishings – it’ll be interesting to try out the new version of Dimension Toolbox, too… and Josh, if you’re reading this, I’ll message you via Facebook about playing. I haven’t done much with my Dimensions for a while – I’ve been too intent on getting as many characters up to 50 before the expansion as possible… I don’t know why, really, as I much prefer playing with backup when I get to the higher levels (I’m not very brave, you see!), and himself doesn’t have a plethora of level 50’s waiting to team up with mine, so that sort of leaves my higher level girls in a bit of a limbo… I’m better than I used to be though – I used to get them up to about level 25, and then… abandon them, only to re-roll them later on as I got new ideas for names (it’s as good an excuse as any! 😉 ) Tomorrow being Cup Day, I might get back to Dimensioning again… and then again, I might not – “undecided at this moment, Captain!”

Weigh-in this morning What can I say? I was expecting it, but I think I was fruitlessly hoping that my weight would go down a bit more before it happened… Yup, I went up! 😦 Only two points, to 119.7kg, and I know it’s only fluid, and that it’ll go down again, but I can’t help being disappointed 😦 Oh well, say lah vee, as the French say… Maybe I’ll go down to 119.1kg tomorrow… maybe I’ll go up to 119.9kg tomorrow… maybe I’ll stay the same… Let’s weight and see… 🙂

Listening to the sound track of the movie “The Dish” at the moment – lots of old songs and music from the 60’s in it – “I Am The Real Thing”, “Classical Gas”, “The Loved One”, and many, many others… good listening! 🙂 Can’t help feeling cheered up listening to it… 🙂

Stay tuned for all the latest on Rift, my weight, our music, and Flipper the cat, tomorrow night! 🙂

Yeah… I think I mentioned once before that I hate (hate, hate, hate!) playing underwater… in Rift (or any other game, for that matter – I was hopeless at it in World of Warcraft, too!) And, of course, the bran’ new zone that opened up with the expansion, is, largely, underwater…. I can cope, sort of, if we’re just going from point A to point B – but fight nasty mobs and bosses in a quest end? Not get hopelessly stuck under ledges? That’s what happened today. We got to the tail end of a particularly long and repetitious quest chain – you see, as you work your way through the countryside, looking for the pillar or icon that you have to destroy, you encounter new groups of nasties (herein after called “mobs”) that you get extra points for killing “x” number of. F’rinstance, you have to go over there, but there’s a big monster blocking your way, and no way around it. So, you kill it (as one does!) Then the words “quest accepted” flash across your screen and you find that you now have to kill anywhere between 10 and 18 of the blighters… and sometimes they can be a bit hard to find, especially when you have multiple players all doing the same quest chain. This is a regular occurrence between point A and point B, but we usually don’t mind because after all, it’s all experience points, right? 🙂 However this particular quest chain said things like: “go and destroy that pillar over there”. So fine, we go off and destroy the pillar. Then it says something like: “oh, by the way, would you mind going back a few blocks and pick up some tasty dandelion leaves for me? Ta…” Well, no, it didn’t say that, exactly, but words to that effect. For crying out loud, why didn’t they just say that they wanted this done while we were over in that neck of the woods?! Then, when you’ve finished those bits, it’ll tell you to go and destroy another whatever. And another one, when you’ve finished with the last one. At the moment it wanted us to close a Water Rift (don’t ask!), and it took us ages to find one, and because it was a big one there were a lot of people all joining in and working on it, so it didn’t take as long to close as it took us to find the [rude word] thing in the first place! Then we’re told that we have to close a Fire Rift. I know we trundled past one while we were looking for the Water one – if only we’d known! (grrrr!) Do you think we could find another one? Noooo…. that’ll have to wait until next Sunday… Anyway, eventually we got to the big nasty Boss’s chamber – underwater, of course – and we set about trying to kill him. We did have a bit of help though, one fishy-type guy who could, and did, heal us – when we could find him. He moved around a lot, you see, and it’s damn hard to watch where all the Boss’s hench-guys are, stay out of the way of all the fire balls and killing curses etc. that they’re hurling at you, fighting off their biting and slashing minions, plus keep an eye on the Boss himself – and follow fishy-face around so that he can heal you! Especially for me, who tends to get a bit flustered and confused with a lot of very impressive visual effects going off around me… then when you add the fact that I don’t know which way I’m going when I’m underwater, well, let me tell you that it’s not a very pretty picture! We both died three or four times… Julian got cross with me because we’d got everything killed off and were down to Mr. Nasty Boss himself, and there I was, hurling dots at him (dots = “damage over time”. You hurl a couple towards a nasty, and first they say “Ha ha, you missed me!”, then they say “Ow, I don’t feel so good…”, then they go “aarrrggghh!” and die! 🙂 ) …so there I was, hurling dots at Mr. Nasty Boss, he looked at Julian – and Julian died. Having just resurrected himself, he was coming back into the chamber when Mr. Nasty Boss keeled over from my dots. I completed the quest chain, he didn’t. So he got mad at me, because he had to do the whole thing all over again. So this time, reverse the positions. This (second) time, I got killed (again!), and as he had, I ended up outside the chamber. I couldn’t resurrect myself because I couldn’t reach my body, but that was OK, I could go to the nearest Graveyard and be resurrected there, and wait for himself to come and find me – after all, I’d completed the quest chain, right? There’s a great big button on the top of the screen saying “Return to Graveyard”, so I pressed it. Nothing happened. Well, we tried just about everything to resurrect me and nothing worked! I was doomed to be a wandering ghost for the rest of my life, maybe… then I remembered that there’s an auto fix for people who inadvertently get themselves stuck in walls, or in deep water at the bottom of sheer cliffs with no way up… well, it was worth a try… I typed “/stuck” and guess what! I ended up in the local Graveyard! Yay me! It cost me a very large fortune to heal myself after so many deaths, but at least I’m now back to whatever passes for normal in Telara these days 🙂 And shortly after that we decided to start dusting down for the day.  Still and all, it was a good bash, and we did go up a level, to 61, and I got to have my first look at the new Masteries (wot I told you about a couple of posts ago), and all they did was confuse me (this confusion business is beginning to get tiresome!), so as soon as I’ve finished here, I shall log back in and get himself to advise me…. 🙂

End of Rift Lecture Notes 🙂

Weigh-in this morning was really cool!  I can finally say (with only a little trepidation) “Yay! I’ve broken the 120kg barrier!” I clocked in at 119.5kg! That’s pretty good, I reckon! 🙂 Let’s see what happens tomorrow….

Stay tuned for all the laters news, and whether Winter goes up… or down… or remains static! 🙂

Well, I might not have been doing much today, but himself has been a very busy boy!  For ages he’s wanted to go through all our music files, de-dupe them (get rid of duplicates), delete corrupted files, and roughly categorize them into genres. He created a list of all the directories involved, and printed it out. The directory tree ended up being 44 pages long… That’s a reasonably large amount of files! Before getting rid of the dross (duplicates and corruptions), there were 26,500 mp3’s spread over 7,000 directories… which equated to 200Gb of data.

How did we come to have so many music files? Most of it is from our combined collections of old vinyl records, tapes, and CDs, “ripped” (or converted) to mp3 format over about twenty three years. We still have a awful lot of ancient vinyl records left to convert, and who knows? we may even get a round tuit one of these centuries 🙂 As to the why we copy them? It’s always a good idea to keep backups, especially with the old vinyl records, most of which are irreplaceable – one of them even comes from as far back as before vinyl, or even shellac, or acetate were invented, but seems to be on some sort of thick waxy material on top of a light cardboard-like backing! That one is an oral rendition of the old fairy story, The Princess and the Pea, spoken in Italian! 🙂 Try replacing that one in a hurry! Anyway, the main idea is to make a backup of as many as we can, storing them on our 3Tb hard drive on our file server (which is going to have to be replaced – erm, the hard drive that is – we’re rapidly running out of room on it, and that’s not just from music files!) Apart from the backup idea, it’s also great to be able to play whatever you want, whenever you want, without having to go through tapes and CDs – some of which will invariably be in another room, or a storage box, just when you want to listen to them… So it’s kept him busy nearly all day (and he’s not finished yet, by a long shot!), whilst I….

…Played “shuffle the character” on Rift. I know I said that I didn’t want to do that again, but I needed some good old fashioned, boring, “bringing up baby” characters on Laethys, and I’d managed to find a name that I liked, that apparently no one else had thought of (seeing as how we’re on the Oceanic server, and not the European one 🙂 ) So Lastrega was born, off-shard, raised to 15, and “shuffled” over to Laethys whilst I “shuffled” one of my level 60 girls across to yet another shard. Lastrega – a contraction of “la” and “strega” – because you can’t have a two part name, though you can have a first name and a second name… I wonder if you could get away with calling your character “La” and then buy a second name of, say, “Strega” – more than one person can have the same second name, so you can create “families”, I guess – Hmmm… I must try it sometime!  However, I digress… La Strega means “The Witch” in Italian, which I thought was rather fitting 😉

Weigh-in this morning was unexpected! I thought that for sure I’d have gone up again, but I didn’t! I’m still not far enough down that I’d be willing to risk saying that I’d broken the 120kg barrier, but if I go down again tomorrow, instead of up, as I’m expecting, then I might be willing to say “Yay! I’ve finally broken the 120kg barrier!” This morning I clocked in at 119.8kg – one point down on yesterday’s effort… So here’s hoping, but I’m still not holding my breath! 😉

Stay tuned tomorrow for all the latest in the Weight and See Game – if we all cross our fingers, toes, eyes and teeth, I might go down again! Here’s hoping! 🙂

Tonight I thought I’d talk about… literature. Literature can mean many things to many people, but when you’re at school it generally refers to English Literature, or “Eng. Lit.”, and if schools are anything like they were when I was at school, from about Year 4 onwards you’ll be given a list of books to read and study; you’ll be asked questions about them in assignments, tests, and exams, and be expected to write essays on them. A very few of these books you will enjoy, others you’ll find dull, boring, maudlin and morbid, and some are just straight out nasty, but you have to read them anyway. They’re supposed to be “literature”, good writing, in most cases considered to be “classics”, with many deep and meaningful messages about different social issues either now, or in the past.

I just thought that I’d mention four of the books that we had to study between Year 4 and Year 6 (for us oldies, that’s Intermediate, Leaving, and Matric!), and which I thought, at the time, mind you, to be totally inappropriate for our age group! Let me know if you’ve had to “do” any of these, and what you thought of them – I’d be quite interested! 🙂

1. The Mayor of Casterbridge
by British author Thomas Hardy. It is set in the fictional town of Casterbridge (based on the town of Dorchester in Dorset). The book is one of Hardy’s Wessex novels, all set in a fictional rural England. It was one of our English Literature novels in Intermediate (Year 4?) and my first “taste” of “proper” English literature; I didn’t like it, and have never really developed a taste for so-called proper Literature since, thanks to most of the novels we were given to study as part of the curriculum of the day. The Mayor of Casterbridge struck me as being a cross between the dull, boring, maudlin and and morbid Sons and Lovers (see below!), and a vacuous Victorian melodrama.
It’s about a rather nasty man who, whilst drunk, auctions off his wife and baby daughter. He swears off drink, and goes on to run a successful business. He has an affair, his long lost wife comes back with the now grown up daughter, who eventually turns out not to be his daughter but the daughter of the man he sold his wife to, all those years ago. Things go from bad to worse, people find out what he’s really like and hate him. He loses his business and goes bankrupt. When he finally dies, he’s penniless and alone. End of story.

Why did they make us read that? The only point it seemed to make is that some people are true rotters, and others are nice – but at our age, we already knew that anyway. Boring. I’d give it an “appropriateness” rating of 4 out of 10

2. Sons and Lovers
Sons and Lovers is a 1913 novel by the English writer D. H. Lawrence. The Modern Library placed it ninth on their list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century. While the novel initially incited a lukewarm critical reception, along with allegations of obscenity, it is today regarded as a masterpiece by many critics and is often regarded as Lawrence’s finest achievement.
If that was his finest achievement, I’d hate to have to read his worst! 😦  It’s the story of the artistic son of a woman who had married badly, and below her class status. His relationship with his mother makes it virtually impossible for him to form any loving or close relationships with other women, and to me the whole book seemed tired, maudlin and totally depressing and pointless. And this is supposed to be suitable reading for a bunch of blossoming young ladies, discovering the delights of romance and love for the first time? This one I’d give an “appropriateness” rating of 3 and 1/2 out of 10.

3. Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Flies is a 1954 dystopian novel by Nobel Prize-winning English author William Golding about a group of British boys stuck on an uninhabited island who try to govern themselves with disastrous results. I guess the word “dystopian” gives the game away, rather… Horrible, horrible story! I almost couldn’t believe what I was reading, and I really, really don’t want to write about it. It seemed to go from bad, to worse, to Stephen King-type horror. I hoped that I would never have to read anything so awful again as long as I lived… but I was wrong.. The worst was yet to come… Lord of the Flies gets an “appropriateness” rating of 1 and a bit out of 10.

4. Bless the Beasts and Children
Bless the Beasts and Children is a 1970 novel by Glendon Swarthout that tells the story of several emotionally disturbed boys away at summer camp who unite to stop a buffalo hunt. The book covers some social issues of the 1960s and 1970s.
This story made Lord of the Flies look as friendly and comforting as Whinny the Pooh! It is a thoroughly horrible story about misfits, one of whom ends up committing suicide in an attempt to stop a buffalo hunt (cull, actually). After a great deal of angst, and delving into the boys’ many and varied psychological problems, it ends with the suicide of one boy driving over a cliff in an attempt to stampede and scatter the “cull” herd – and you just know things will not be pleasant for the rest of the misfits. I would never, ever countenance this book falling into the hands of sensitive and emotional teenagers, and yet this “literature” was one of the books we had to study for English Literature in Matric (Year 6). It gets an “appropriateness” rating of -10 out of 10!

Who decides what is good enough to be classified as “Literature”? And who chooses the books for the Years 4 to 6 English Literature curriculum? Upon what, exactly, do they base their selections?

Why anyone would deliberately go out of their way to read…. these sorts of books… is totally beyond me. They may be well written, but so are a lot of other books that are not considered “literature”; they may well cover and explore some of the social issues of their time(s), but so too do a lot of good novels that, once again, don’t fall into the “classical” meaning of the term “English Literature”. And surely there must be many, many classics of the English Literature standard that aren’t quite so depressing and mind numbing as the examples I’ve given above – but apparently they weren’t thought to be suitable for young ladies between the ages of 14 and 17. Such a shame, too, as English Expression and English Literature* were my two best subjects – I don’t think I ever got an exam mark under 90, or a grading lower than A-; just think how much better I could have been if we’d been given something slightly more interesting than those pitiful examples! Oh well, all water under the proverbial now…

Weigh-in this morning was… amazing… 🙂 down to… (wait for it!) 119.9kg! 🙂 No, I’m not going to say that I’ve broken the 120kg barrier… yet! .9kg is just too close for comfort! 😉 Tomorrow’s the first of the month, and I start taking the fluid retaining Provera again for ten days I’ll say that I’ve broken the 120kg barrier when I get down to, say, 119.5kg… But I’m very pleased, anyway 🙂 I did my exercises today, too… maybe that’ll make a difference?

Stay tuned, and find out all the latest tomorrow night! 🙂

Hmmm… What can I tell you? 🙂 Doesn’t the title make it obvious? 😉 I couldn’t think what to call this entry, let alone what to write about tonight! 🙂 Today has been very peaceful and quiet… My favourite eldest daughter came over for the day, and, as usual, after luncheon we retired to the parlour lounge room, and watched an episode of Agents of Shield, and several episodes of Person of Interest (which is really getting interesting at the moment!). Her equal but more technical half arrived to whisk her off to some sort of meeting, and himself and I had dinner. Well, he had dinner, I had my soup (tomato tonight!) Later on we were talking about how he’s trying to take a step back from all the work he’s been doing for the Body Corporate… Living in an apartment has heaps of advantages, especially when it’s right across the road from a major shopping mall, has a reasonably secure underground parking area, a lift, and fabulous views! (especially on the 5th floor, where we are) 🙂 It also has its share of disadvantages, like the plumbing being just adequate, dependence on one lift, which shows its displeasure of the summer heat by breaking down when it gets really hot, the need to be generally quieter than you would in a normal house, etc., etc… Most of the owners and tenants are elderly, and there is a dearth of people young and interested enough to join the Body Corporate committee. How many of you live in apartments? How many of you have to deal with a Body Corporate? Probably not many, so perhaps I had better explain…

When this building was erm.. ‘built’, the developer formed the Body Corporate. This Body Corporate owns the fabric or structure of the building ( the outer walls  and its common areas). For instance, although my mother and others bought these apartments, all they really bought was the title to live here. Rules were set up by the Body Corporate which dictate what colours we can paint the outside of our walls (we can’t), what colour the side of the curtains facing the outside and or street have to be (white or cream), and what we can and can’t put on the balconies (drying of washing prohibited!) The Body Corporate also organises rubbish collection, window washing (outside of the windows only), general repairs and maintenance to the structural and common areas, and so forth. It’s a business worth about $150,000 a year, so it has to be run properly.

It’s a pretty thankless task, and Julian and our next door neighbour have been doing the brunt of the work for years. As the other owners and tenants get older and more curmudgeonly, so the complaints and grizzles get louder, more frequent, and quite often silly and childish, and 99 and 3/4 of these fall to Julian to fix, sort out, and or smooth over – that’s on top of the financial side of looking after things. Now, I don’t know about him, but I’m getting sick and tired of him always in the office, pouring over Body Corporate business! We say we want to go away for a bit, overseas… but even if I was fit and well, even if we didn’t have Flipper to look after, we couldn’t go away because there’s too much work to do, and no-one to look after it for him, even for a couple of weeks.

So anyway, he’s looking at stepping down from his position as secretary (of the committee)  This would be very nice indeed, but… what will happen to things if he steps away from the helm? When he took on this job in about 2008, the Body Corporate finances were in a shocking state – it took two years to get things back in the black, and apart from having to get the lift mechanism replaced early next year, the finances are looking fairly healthy…

Sounds to me like it might be a very good idea to look for somewhere new, when he relinquishes his position, rather than stay around and wait for the – probably inevitable – slide into chaos and neglect, which will be a real shame, as I really like this place (though there’s lots I’d love to do to refurbish it! 😉 )

Weight-wise this morning was like a dream come true!  Down to 120.1kg! You can bet your bottom dollar that I’ll be back up again tomorrow – I remembered to have my afternoon tea this afternoon Tomorrow, however, after the cleaner has been, we have vowed and sworn to get the wheelchair (to act as an anchor for the elastic) into the lounge room, and I’m going to get all enthusiastic and energetic and get stuck into my exercises! 🙂

I think. Will I or won’t I? Will my weight go back up again tomorrow? Will I remember my afternoon tea again? Stay tuned for all the answers! 😉