04.16 pm

Once again, a very quiet day here chez nous – for once we didn’t have any appointments or places we had to be for whatever – so we pretty much sat on our hands this morning – well, I did, anyway. Julian did a bit of office work, sifting through our over-inflated portfolio, looking for deadwood to “slash and burn”. You know, there’s really only one thing wrong with this weeding out of the deadwood – then we have to decide what we’re going to plough the proceeds back into! *sigh* Oh well – yes, it is quite nice, just sitting back and letting the proceeds trickle in without having to worry (too much!) about them – but we could (and should!) be doing a lot better – we do, I suppose, have an obligation to those who worked and saved so hard to build up the “Family Business”, not to fritter it but to improve and add to their endeavours, both for ourselves, and those who come after us.

I’m sitting here, trying to write, whilst sampling a couple of Hot Cross Buns that we bought at Wood Frog yesterday. It’s not easy, typing with one finger, and munching away at half a Hot Cross Bun in your other hand! I know that – much to my disgust – Hot Cross Buns appear on the supermarket shelves the week after Christmas, however it’s around this time of the year that we start buy up a few Hot Cross Buns here and there, to sample, so that about two weeks before Easter, after we’ve had a chance to “test drive” about half a dozen different kinds of HCB’s, we can make an informed decision and put in an order with the lucky winner of the Hot Cross Bun Test, ensuring that come Easter, we’ll have plenty of what we consider to be the best HCB’s available. This year we’ve started off with the Wood Frog HCB’s, and my goodness, they were yummy, with a capital Y, U, M, M, and Y! The guy we bought them from said that he’ll have an order book available early next week, so that people can put in their Easter Hot Cross Bun orders – paying in advance, of course! Personally, I think we’ll have a hard time finding any HCB’s up to the truly outstanding standard of the Wood Frog Buns – however, I also think we’ll have a hard time finding any HCB’s quite as expensive as those! 🙁 They’re $3.50 each! Each! A dozen would cost you $42.00 – and the two dozen that we’d be ordering would cost us $84,00! (*Winter shakes her head sadly, then continues in her very best Hillbilly accent*) There ain’t no way, no how, that we’ll be paying thet merch money fer eenuff Worm Engree Rabbits to tarde es over Easter! (*Winter goes back into normal voice-mode*) I wonder if I can haggle him down a bit… or if he gives a nice, hefty discount, if you order more than a dozen at a time? Anyway, next on our list to try are the Ferguson Plarre ones, followed closely by the Baker’s Delight Buns. From memory, we got our HCB’s from Ferguson Plarre last year – and they were pretty good! Hmm! I wonder if they make Simnel Cakes?

Julian’s already been up the street once – to get things for our dinner tonight, mainly, but it turns out that we don’t have enough oregano growing in our somewhat meager Herb Garden, so he’s had to go out again – just to get some more oregano! Poor Julian – it hasn’t been his afternoon! He was putting the rest of the shopping away before, trying to be quick because he had the dinner to cook – and in his hurry he dropped a two liter plastic [bottle/container/thingy] of milk on the floor, where it burst open and milk went everywhere – including… under the fridge! Oh dear – I just had a horrible thought! Satai seems to have lost all his little sausage toys – again! We’ve looked everywhere but haven’t been able to spot them… I sincerely hope they’re not under the fridge, helping to soak up all that spilt milk! I guess we’ll find out as soon as dinner is safely in the oven! 😕

I got an email from Blizzard today – they’re the people who run WoW – and apparently they’re having a “special” on at the moment – 25% off various Game Services, like Transferring characters from one Realm to another, changing character Names, Factions and/or Appearance and Gender. 25% off isn’t bad, so I decided to take them up on their generous offer, and move one of my characters from my primary Realm to another, because I really needed another character slot on my primary Realm, but I’d filled them all up. Anyway, I clicked on the “Transfer” 25% button in the email, and moved Ellrevienne from Saurfang to Sen’jin – but I’m not entirely sure that I got my discount! I shall investigate further! While I was waiting for Ellrevienne to be moved, I created another couple of Horde characters (which was the whole reason for me moving Ellrevienne! She was Alliance, eleven of my twelve character slots were full, and I “needed” two more Horde characters there! Ellrevienne moved… simple! 😉 ) I ended up setting up my two new characters, but as soon as I had them set up, sorted, and Transmogrified, I logged out, and started writing this. I feel a wee bit guilty for not writing anything last night, but we’d been out nearly all day – originally, we were just going to Bushy Park and come home for lunch, but Julian wanted to get something from Doncaster, so we went there first, and ended up having lunch at the Coffee Hit, before heading off to Bushy Park… They had a lot more fruit and vegetables than they had the last time we were there, but unfortunately I only had a choice of apples, pears, Nashi pears, bananas, and plums (if you discount watermelon, pineapple, dragon fruit, oranges, grapefruit, and a couple of somewhat pallid and anaemic-looking mangoes!) to choose from. I don’t know if I’ve told you before – I probably have, but I’ve forgotten, so hopefully you will have too – but I don’t really like eating apples. I don’t think I could even tell you why I don’t like eating them – I just seem to get tired of chewing before I even get half way through one. Cutting them into quarters helps, but even so… and yet I have no trouble eating a pear – even a large one! Go figure! Anyway, I ended up getting three “new season” Packham pears, two “new season” (they must be, because they certainly look different from all the other Corella pears I’ve had!) Corella pears, and three, rather big, extremely unusual, dark red pears – I think they’re called “Starkrimson“, or something (but I may well be wrong! I think the sign on them said something about “spectacular”, or “crimson”, or something-or-other! If they’re still there next time, I’ll be able to tell you – but in the meantime, they look pretty much exactly like the Starkrimson pears!) So… I’m back to eating pears, pears, and only pears, apart from the stewed Nectarines and bananas that I have on my breakfast cereal! Never mind – what fruit comes into season after all these pears? Unless it’s more apples, I’m really looking forward to whatever’s coming into season next! 😕

I’ll have to fill you in on all the rest tomorrow – like what we’ve eaten, and how my weight’s going… but it’s getting late, and my dinner is almost ready, so I’ll leave you all with this pretty picture,

So do drop in again tomorrow night to find out the rest of the story of our last two days, and please try especially hard to bee good, don’t forget that laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired – and remember to keep warm – or cool, depending on the circumstances,to look after yourselves, and to always drive carefully – but most importantly, please – don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

04.43 pm

Well, it’s been a fairly quiet day today – Julian left home fairly early today to go to the Dentist, and I mostly just… pottered around, frittering away my time as I usually do, when I’m uncertain as to exactly how much time I’m going to have before I have to jump up and do something meaningful – like make a cup of coffee, for instance, or do the cat litter boxes, or go out shopping – I’m sure you know what I mean! 😉 Anyway, Julian was ostensibly going to have a wisdom tooth extracted, but he thought that he might be developing a cavity close to the gum line on another tooth, so he wanted the Dentist to look at that too, and maybe fix that, and leave the wisdom tooth for another visit. No such luck – there was no cavity in the other tooth, so the wisdom tooth came out – quickly, painlessly, and with none of the usual dramas that so often accompany the removal of wisdom teeth – like the time he’d had his other three wisdom teeth removed, about 30 years ago (not long after he and I had got together, and he’d moved in, actually!) That was not a fun episode, I can tell you! One of the wisdom teeth cracked, and had to be removed in pieces, and from memory, the other two weren’t much better! He had the three of them removed “in the chair”, with just a couple of needles of Novocaine to numb his mouth – the Dentist later admitting that he really should have had the three teeth extracted in hospital, under a general anesthetic! But things are a lot much more betterer these days, and with full facial x-rays and scans the Dentist can now see beforehand what sorts of problems might arise, like crooked or “claw” roots, that have grown into the jawbone itself (which happened to my grandmother – the dentist had to saw the tooth out of her jawbone, and he felt so bad about it that he actually went out of his way to call in on his way home, to see if she was alright. She hadn’t mentioned anything about going to the dentist to the rest of the family, and was busy cooking dinner for them when he called in, “pale-faced and trembling” (she said) because of what he’d had to put her through!) Anyway, things seem to have gone alright for Julian – this wisdom tooth had three roots which had grown together into one long, straight root that came out without any problems, so all’s well that ends well, and we’re having pasta (with some more of our own delicious – fully organic and home-grown – tomato passata!) for dinner! 🙂

After he got home we both played a bit of WoW until lunchtime – not as a team, or group, as we do on Sundays though. I hadn’t done the cat litter boxes this morning as our usual morning “routine” got thoroughly stymied by Julian’s visit to the Dentist, and I was going to do them after lunch – but I couldn’t do them then, either, as the cats had just had their lunch too, and needed access to said litter boxes! Arrgghh! More frittering! So I went and sat in the lounge room, and guess what I did! 🙂 I betcha can’t! I’m quite a fan of the (so-called) “Reality” show, Survivor, and a new season, Season 34, had started on the 9th of March – my Birthday! – on 9GO! I usually record all the Survivor shows, “to watch later”, dontchano, only I never seem to get the time – or the inclination – so sit down for a Survivor super-marathon, and I usually end up deleting it all, unwatched 🙁  Anyway, I’d recorded the first two episodes – “this time would be different!” I vowed, and I actually sat and watched the first two-hour episode this afternoon. I guess I’d better watch episode two tomorrow afternoon, before recording episode three tomorrow night! After having my Survivor “fix” for the day, I dutifully trotted off to clean out the three cat litter boxes… what better way to spend an afternoon, eh?! 😉

And as that was pretty much my day, and I’ve caught you all up on our various activities, I’ll mosey right on along to all the “good” bits!! 🙂

Food stuffs. Last night for dinner we had gently pan-fried chicken breasts which had been well rubbed with a very nice herb and spice mixture of paprika, garlic and onion that Julian had found in his Christmas Stocking last Christmas (ahem! but which was still well and truly within its “use by” date!) It was delicious, and somehow the rub managed to keep the chicken really moist, succulent, and extremely tender! It might have been a “commercial” spice rub, but it was definitely well worth getting again! We had the chicken on a bed of steamed rice mixed with diced red capsicum and finely chopped spring onions, and for dessert I had my second last Williams pear (I’d thought it was going to be the last of my pears, but I was mistaken – it was the second last! I have another for tonight…) and an “over-the-back-fence” fig, with a CHOBANI lemon yoghurt chaser! Today for lunch I had two pieces of my current favourite sourdough bread – the black “Soir” sourdough, toasted – one piece just plain buttered, the other piece buttered, with a scraping of leatherwood honey. It really does taste marvelously fantastic – I can’t recommend it highly enough! Tonight, as I mentioned earlier, we’re having pasta for dinner, as it’ll be easier for Julian to eat, with the gaping great hole in his jaw where his wisdom tooth used to be. We’ll have the pasta with some freshly grated parmesan cheese, and another of the 400 gram “sachets” of our very own, fully organic, and totally home-grown tomato passata, with (maybe!) a bit of “blonded” diced onion thrown in at the last minute. For dessert I’ll be having the last of my Williams pears (and yes, we will be going to Bushy Park tomorrow, as I wasn’t able to get any sensible fruit at the Colonial Fruit place in Doncaster!) another of my “figs-over-the-fence”, and an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in this morning. Wasn’t good! Roll on Easter! I went from 74.8 kg yesterday, to 74.8 kg this morning – in other words, I stayed the same… Oh well, at least I didn’t go up! (that’s happening tomorrow! 😉 )

And that brings me up to tomorrow, and apart from the (possible!) visit to Bushy Park, I have absolutely no idea what’s happening! I’d like to get in a bit more WoW-ing, and I’d like to see the next episode of Survivor, but it’s really all in the lap of the ghods! So I guess all of you happy little readers out there really have no recourse but to drop in again tomorrow night, in order to find out! 🙂  There’s really very little more to tell you all – the cats are well, the fish are well, and we’re both well (even if Julian does have a massive hole in his jaw!) so I guess that’s about “it” from me again for tonight! 😯 So until tomorrow night, do try hard to bee good, remember that if you don’t know where you’re going, any road’ll take you there, and don’t forget to keep cool – or warm, as the whim takes you, to look after yourselves, and to always drive carefully – but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! ciao, all! 🙂

04.47 pm

My very favourite eldest daughter was over today – Julian has just departed with her to drop her off at home, because her husband came home early (for a change!) Normally he catches the train down to Geelong for work, but this morning he drove down instead, so we had an early end to our day of watching episodes from our favourite television shows, and you lucky guys get to catch up on all the stuff that’s been goin’ down around here for the past two days! 🙂

Yesterday we left home early to get to Doncaster for my Optometrist appointment at 11.30 am. I have to say that the Optometrist was very thorough, and the whole thing took over an hour – with two room changes involved. Well, I suppose the rooms are very small, and there’s an awful lot of equipment involved, but the upshot of it all was that (a) my new lens prescription is vastly different from my old one (the one I’m currently struggling with – no wonder everything I look at looks kinda fuzzy!) (b) the pressure in my eyes is fine, and (c) I had photos taken of both optic nerves, so they’ll have something to compare them to next time I have my eyes tested, and which showed that while I have very slight cataracts starting to form, my eyes are in extremely good condition… for “someone my age”! Because Glaucoma runs in my mother’s side of the family, they want me to have a sort-of Field Test when I go in to pick up my new (Birthday present!) glasses. The test consists of you sitting in a darkened room, staring straight ahead of you with your head in a sort-of round booth. In your hand you hold a little switch with a push button. Pin-head lights are turned on randomly, one at a time and, while still looking straight ahead, every time you see – or sometimes only sense – one of the lights, you click the button – this is to map your field of vision, especially your peripheral vision. It takes over an hour, and is as boring and dull as sailing solo to Russia on a leaky cargo transport! :/

After that, it was lunch time, so we had lunch at the Shingle Inn, then we came home via the Sourdough bread place – and here I have an apology to make. Apparently the place isn’t called the “Tree Frog”, which was what I told you all the other day, it’s actually the “Wood Frog“, and the bread isn’t called “Noir”, which is French for “black”, it’s called “Soir”, which is French for “evening”, and you’ll actually get to see it, pictured in the Header of the above link! So for those two mistakes, you can blame my “Oldtimer’s disease“! 😉

Although we’d planned to stop off at Bushy Park on the way home in order to get more fruit, both for stewing and for my “dessert” after dinner, we decided not to do so – the weather was just too humid and sticky – we’d decided to go to the Colonial Fruit Company while we were over at Doncaster Shoppingtown instead, which turned out not to be such a good idea, after all! The Colonial Fruit Company over there at Doncaster has changed so much since it first opened after the massive renovations there in 2008 – it had been a really vibrant, exotic, exciting store – from fruit and vegetables that the Queen Vic Market would have been jealous of, to continental produce of all kinds, small goods, dairy, fish, meat, all kinds of fresh pasta – it was a veritable Aladdin’s Cave of culinary delicacies! But slowly, slowly, over the years, the continental section withered and died – not from lack of customers willing to buy the produce, but from the cost of the overheads to maintain it – we know from talking to various shopkeepers that Westfield charge a very mean rental for their shops, and have some pretty dire conditions that have to be followed (one of which was – if the Centre was open, the shop had to be too – even if it was a Public Holiday, or even Christmas Day! – a very sore point with a lot of the shop managers!) plus the fact that a lot of the continental produce they carried required fairly sophisticated refrigeration units – it can’t have been easy to maintain… Anyway, as I said, little by little, they lost all the really interesting and exciting areas that they’d started out with, and the fruit and vegetables started to get more ordinary, plain, and not quite as fresh as they’d formerly been. Yesterday I was horrified to find that instead of half a store of fresh fruit and vegetables, there were now three outside (the entrance to the store) “bins” of fruit – bananas, apples, oranges, pears, and while they’re still available, peaches, nectarines, and plums. No apricots, even, and the vegetable variety wasn’t much better! Practically the entire store has been taken over by a sort-of Asian condiments store (mind you, I didn’t go in and have a proper look around! Next time I’ve over there though, I shall – so “watch this space”!) In the end, we got some bananas, I bought three Williams pears, because as much as I do like pears, I am starting to get just a little tired of them! I also bought eight enormous yellow nectarines – the only size they had – to stew, which I started doing shortly after we got home. In the end, it was Julian who had to cut them into (large!) quarters, and remove the stones for me – they were too big and hard for me to manage without totally mangling them – and then I stewed them. I had three of those quarter pieces on my cereal this morning, and they were absolutely delicious! 🙂

On the last leg of our way home, we stopped off at the Pet Barn place at Vermont South shopping centre to get some more “sausage toys” for Satai – he loves them so much, but is always losing them under the furniture (for which Julian is forever scrabbling around on the floor getting them out) or under the fridge (where they will have to live forevermore – the fridge is far too big and unwieldly for Julian to be able to mount a successful “sausage search and rescue” mission!) and we needed more cat food, too! These “sausage” toys that Satai loves so much are about the same size and shape as a real-life cocktail frankfurter, stuffed with, or scented with catnip – he’ll play with them for hours, running around carrying them in his mouth, or batting them all over the house like a football, or an ice hockey puck, occasionally making little high-pitched growls at them, or anyone who he thinks might be trying to rob him of his “sausage” 🙂

After finishing stewing the nectarines, I just had time to tidy up the kitchen before Sean arrived, and by the time he’d left and we had dinner and all, there was no time for writing, but not to worry, you found out all about yesterday this evening, right? Now, having caught you all up to date, I’ll get on with the “good” bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Because we were over at Doncaster, we had lunch at the Shingle Inn, where I had “my usual” – a BLT on sourdough, a chocolate caramel slice, and a long black, with a small jug of skinny milk on the side. I also pinched two chips from Julian’s plate of fish and chips 😳 For dinner last night we had beef, pepper and Barossa Valley Shiraz sausages, with a half an organic and fully home-grown tomato, sugar snap peas, and chips. For dessert I had a Williams pear, and a MOO Sticky Apple and Organic Honey yoghurt. Because my very favourite eldest daughter was over, Julian went out and brought back lunch – you guessed it, from Baker’s Delight – a savoury roll cut three ways, and a pepperoni and capsicum “pizza” roll, also cut three ways, plus three delicious fruit and white chocolate scones – one each, with a smattering of butter. Tonight we’re having chicken breast, rubbed with a paprika, garlic and onion herb and spice mix, pan-fried, and served on a bed of plain steamed rice, mixed with chopped red capsicum and finely chopped spring onion. For dessert I’ll have my last Williams pear (before it gets over-ripe!) and a fig from the over-the-fence fig tree next door, and one of the CHOBANI yoghurts – I’m not quite sure what “flavours” we have left though – I’ll let you all know tomorrow night! 😉

Weigh-in yesterday. From 74.9 kg on Sunday, I went down to 74.6 kg… I can live with that, I guess…
Weigh-in this morning. 🙁 I wish it was two weeks after Easter! I’d be going down, not up! I went from 74.6 kg yesterday to 74.8 kg Still, I did have a very nice BLT on sourdough, and a yummy chocolate caramel slice for lunch yesterday – I reckon it was worth the two points! 😉

And that pretty much brings me up to tomorrow, when – apart from Julian’s Dental appointment in the morning – I have absolutely no idea what’s happening! Like me, you’ll all just have to wait with battered breath to find out what happened! 😉 Do drop in again tomorrow night to find out what my weight did, how Julian went at the Dentist’s, and what Sal and Satai got up to during the day! Until then though, do try hard to bee good, don’t forget that some infinities are bigger than other infinities – and remember to always drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm – or cool – depending on your preferences – but most importantly, please – don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.04 pm

Well, here I am – sorry about last night, but I was just so tired yesterday afternoon! After lunch, I thought I’d just go into the lounge and read for a bit – Sal came and sat next to me on the recliner (it’s funny – he doesn’t like sitting on laps, he prefers sitting next to your legs – usually on the right hand side! My beautiful Gingee did that, too!) So there’s me reading, with Sal sitting companionably next to me, and the next thing I know, it’s almost our dinner time, and both cats were clamouring for their dinner too! So, I’m sorry about that, but I didn’t get a chance to write anything!

Anyway, not to worry – we finished our “Tour Of Northrend Duty” a little earlier than we usually do on a Sunday – and boy, did we have a day of it! We were actually doing quite well, questing around Howling Fjord, and having lots of fun, so Julian decided that by this stage – we’d just hit level 73 – we were probably about good enough to run Utgarde Keep, a five-man dungeon… on our own! Anyway, I said “sure! Why not?! I mean, what’s the worst that can happen to us? We’ll get killed! But that’s OK, I have my trusty Soulstone to revive me if that happens!” (what’s a Soulstone? Well, Warlocks are able to “take” the soul from something dead – it doesn’t seem to matter whether they killed the corpse or not – and use it to instantly bring themselves back to life if they’re careless enough to get themselves killed. They can only carry one Soulstone at a time, and each Soulstone is only viable for 15 minutes. It usually “runs out”, just as you’re quietly getting yourself killed!) So off we go to Utgarde Keep. I have to admit though, for two (probably silly!) people running a five-man Dungeon, we did pretty well, even if we weren’t able to finish it! We did knock off the first Big Boss (after dying two – or was it three? times!) We were stymied at the second last Big Boss though – mainly because there were two of them. The idea was to get the big one down to 10% health, then turn on the second one, bring him down, then go back to the first and finish him off. We died about three or four times attempting this – and we almost pulled it off! We even got the first one down, and the second one more than half way – but in the end, they were just too strong for us. We’ll go back and have another bash at it in another couple of levels, I think… However, we did go up two levels – we started off at level 72, and finished the day off at level 74, which was pretty good going, if you ask me!

Apart from doing the shopping, and cleaning out the Fish House, Julian did a lot of washing yesterday, including a doona cover. Once the doona cover came out of the dryer, he spread it out on the bed to let it cool down, and to allow the worst of the wrinkles to smooth out a bit, before putting it on the doona and making the bed. “Someone” found it, didn’t they! 🙂

Isn’t he sooo cute! We let him cuddle in it until it started to cool down too much, and he got bored – er, about two minutes, I think, then he bounced off to chase his blue sausage (a small, catnip scented, soft toy that he absolutely adores!) then the doona was put into the cover, the bed was made, and Satai couldn’t have been less interested in it if it had been made from stone!

On to the “good” bits! 🙂 Because Julian went out shopping in the morning, he brought lunch from Bakers Delight home with him – a ham and cheese Danish, and a rather spicy pepperoni and capsicum “pizza” roll, of which we had half each, and two fruit and white chocolate scones, of which we had one each – with just a smidgen of butter… For dinner last night we had a fairly basic, good old Aussie meal – “steak and chips”! But! It was the yummiest steak, cooked to absolute perfection! Julian cooked it on his (fairly new – he got it for Christmas) heavy cast iron frying pan (skillet?) so that it came to the plate complete with those snazzy “professional-looking” diagonal sear marks on the meat – which makes it taste ever so much more betterer, dontchano?! 😉 Oven baked chips, half a fully organic, completely home-grown, Black Russian tomato (delish!) and steamed sugar-snap peas completed the main part of the meal, and for dessert I had a beautiful, “jammy” fig from the tree growing over our back fence, the last of my Williams pears (again, a little “floury”, but still edible and tasty) and a Lemon CHOBANI yoghurt. Remember I was telling you about the round, black, “Noir” Sourdough loaf that we bought at the Tree Frog over at Doncaster Shoppingtown the other day, and how I wanted to try it toasted? Well, today for lunch I had two slices of the “Noir” loaf – one slice with just plain butter, the other slice buttered, with a little bit of Leatherwood Honey on it. I tell you, that bread was made to be toasted! It was fantastic! Sourdough makes beautiful toast anyway, but this was just “toasted heaven” – the touch of Leatherwood Honey was nice, yes, but honestly, that toast didn’t need anything to dress it up for the red carpet, it was already wearing an “haute couture dress with stiletto heels”! Next time we’re over at Doncaster, we must get some more! Tonight for dinner we’ll be having our usual Sunday night omelet – with cheese, red capsicum, fully organic and home-grown tomato, bacon and diced onion, which Julian fries before adding them to the omelet. For dessert I’ll have another of the “over-the-fence” figs, a brown Nashi pear, and an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in yesterday morning. Wasn’t nice! Two points up from Friday, from 74.5 kg to 74.7 kg (*pout*)
Weigh-in this morning. Was even worse! 😥 Up another two points, from 74.7 kg to 74.9 kg
Ah well, it’s nearly Easter… and after that, we’re both going to be doing a stint on the Optifast diet! Just as well I kept all my meal plans and menus! 🙂

And once again, that brings me up to tomorrow! I’m not quite sure what’s happening! Oh! I just remembered! I will be over at Doncaster again! Tomorrow! For that Optometrist appointment I had to re-schedule! Good! We can get some more of that fantastic bread! 😀 Then we have to pay a visit to Bushy Park – all I have left in the way of fruit are a couple of brown Nashi pears, and a couple of “over-the-fence” figs! We’ll need bananas too, and some more stewing fruit – I hope they have some apricots left – they’re the easiest to pull the stones out of without mutilating the fruit too much… and it’s looking like the poor cats will be on their own for most of the day, poor little babies! :/ Sean will be over in the afternoon – and I think that’s probably enough for the day! I’m not sure if I’ll get a chance to write anything tomorrow night – I’ll try, but I can’t promise! But you know you’ll hear all about our doin’s the following day anyway, don’t you! 🙂 And so I guess that’s about “it” from me again for tonight! Do drop in again tomorrow night (or the next night!) to catch up on all the news chez nous, but in the meantime, please try to bee good, remember – life isn’t about finding yourself, life is about creating yourself – and don’t forget to always drive carefully, to keep cool – or warm, depending on the outside temperature, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

02.55 pm

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone, and Happy Winter Day, too, because at long last, I think I’ve finally found the Theme/Template that I can live with – at least for the next week or so, anyway! 😉 It’s a “third-party” one, which of course isn’t available on the Word Press.com site, otherwise I’m sure I would have found it by now! It’s not perfect, mind you, but it does seem to tick all the right boxes. I can bypass the “show extract” format with its highly annoying (to me!) “Read More” waste-of-time – so that got a √  🙂 I can, at a pinch, add my own graphic header (instead of the misty blossom “banner” thingy under the site title!¹) but with this particular Theme, I’m able to use of an absolutely enormous range of Google Fonts, regardless of whether they’re on my computer (or yours either, apparently!) so I was able to put quite a nice site title/Header text and tagline together in of my own choice of colour and Font – so a great big √ for that ability – I think it turned out pretty well! It also has the ability to be turned into an online store, with all the forms and everything needed for an online store – but you won’t be seeing any of that on my blog! 🙂 There were more positive notes too, but really – I’m not sure that any of you are all that interested, are you? (waits for chorus of approval…. not a sausage! Ohhhh-kay then, moving right along….)

So, as I think I might have mentioned, we had the electricians here this morning, to put in an inside power switch for the outside fountain, and to make some changes to our breaker-box, in preparation to having more solar panels installed. They were supposed to arrive at 08.00 am, but didn’t arrive until about 08.30 am… (and at about three o’clock this afternoon Julian received an SMS from the electricians, which had been sent around ten to eight this morning – telling him that they were running a bit late and didn’t expect to get here until around 08.30 am! Where had that SMS been for nearly half a day??! Thanks, Tel$tra!) When they arrived, Julian ran around the house, collecting cats so that they could be secured in the Library (Satai’s dining room and bedroom) for the duration. He gave them a bowl of pussy biscuits to appease them for the lock-up, but Sal had other ideas, and ran off into our bedroom! Not such a clever idea after all, because Julian simply locked him up in there for a few minutes, until the electricians were sorted out and organised – then he went in, scooped him up, and took him back to the Library. Well, the electricians got on with their work, and sure enough, not much later all the power went off. Julian and I went into the lounge room to read, and all was relatively quiet, except for the plaintive beeping of the UPS’s (“Uninterruptible Power Supplies” – designed to sacrifice themselves in an emergency, to give you time to shut your computers down safely) …and the yowling and hammering on the door by the two cats, who objected rather violently to being shut up in the Library again. Well, we could hear a lot of thumping and banging, and a lot of what we surmised was scratching at the door – but it wasn’t until after the electricians had finished and gone, when it was finally safe enough to let our poor little boys out, that we opened the door and saw the full extent of the damage those two little cats had done! 🙁  Maybe we should change their names to “Whelan” and “Wrecker”! We don’t know exactly who was responsible for the initial onslaught (unfortunately poor little Satai bore the brunt of the blame, mainly because he’s the naughtiest and cheekiest, whereas Sal is usually very staid and calm…  :/ ) In hindsight, I think it was probably Sal² who began the destruction, for no other reason than that he feared a repeat of that terrible night when Julian was carted off to hospital, and panicked – Satai, not understanding the whys and wherefores , simply joined in with great gusto. No matter. Julian is currently on his way home from a dental x-ray, and stopping off at Bunnys for the second time today, to get “thingz” to fix what the cats destroyed. They’d completely ripped up about four inches of perfectly good carpet, all the way along under the door, and totally shredded it! It’s less-rather-than-more salvageable – but we’ll do our best. We can’t get too cross with them either, because they wouldn’t know what we were angry about – but I tell you what! Next time they have to be confined to one room, they’ll be going into the (fully tiled!) laundry, with a litter box, a damp towel to lie on (for some weird reason, cats seem to adore lying on damp towelling!)  and some water! There’s plenty of sunlight and light in there – they like to get in there in the mornings, and sunbathe – and there’s not really much else they can get into in there! Anyway, what’s done is done… better that a carpet be destroyed than they get out and get lost, or hit on the road…

And now for the “good” bits! 😉

Food stuffs. Last night we had pasta for dinner, and we used a home-made “sachet”³ of our home-made – from fully organic and home-grown tomatoes – “passata” for the sauce! I’d tasted it as it was being made, and it was really delicious! For our sauce last night, Julian fried up a small to medium diced onion in a little butter and olive oil, until it was “blonded” (translucent and slightly golden) before adding it to the passata, with a few good grinds of fresh pepper. I can honestly tell you, it was the best pasta napoletana I’ve ever had – including my father’s and my grandmother’s! We had a bit of grated parmesan on it, and I hate to say it, but we both went back for the very small amount of “seconds” that was left in the pasta pot! For dessert I had a very, very nice Williams pear, and a small tub of the MOO Sticky Apple and Organic Honey yoghurt. Today for lunch we sampled the “Noir” sourdough bread from the Tree Frog, over at Doncaster Shoppingtown. Now, I have to say this – the bread was delicious, as we knew it would be, but we should have had it plain toasted, not as a sandwich. The loaf is round, and cut for toast, which makes for a slightly weird, and very thick, sandwich shape. Well, we had it as a sandwich, with sliced home-grown tomato and chopped up chunks of left-over chicken from our dinner on Wednesday night – all very, very yummy, but I felt that there were really a few too many competing flavours to taste the bread properly – I think I’ll just have plain buttered toast, next time… Tonight for dinner we’re having lamb backstrap marinated in the Feta and basil “slurry”, then pan-fried, and served on a bed of plain, steamed rice with finely sliced spring onions. For dessert I might have the last pear – before it goes “off”, and an Apple Le Rice.

Weigh-in this morning. *sigh* same old, same old… It was actually a bit of a scramble this morning to get myself weighed, and clothed, before the electricians, so we sort of raced through it a bit. The first time I hopped on the scales, it told me 74.5 kg – the same as yesterday – then I hopped on a second time, and first it shot up to 74.7 kg, before waggling around a bit and ending up on 74.5 kg again. So, phew! Same as yesterday, 74.5 kg – not too bad, considering what I’d had for lunch the day before! 🙂

And that pretty much brings me back to tomorrow! I actually have no idea what’s happening tomorrow, especially now that I think I’ve found a blog Theme that I actually really like! Maybe I’ll finally get a bit of WoW-ing in, I think I might have to practice a bit, seeing as we’ll be playing all day Sunday! Anyway do drop in again tomorrow night to find out what’s been happening up this side of the black stump – about the only thing for the blog that I have to do now is get back to taking pretty photos of the cats and Auric and Dapple, so that all of you out there in Reader Land can see how much Satai has grown! However, that’s about “it” from me for tonight, so I shall admonish you all to bee good, don’t forget that it is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not, and remember to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep warm – or cool, depending on the circumstances – but most importantly, please – don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

¹ this particular Theme came with a very pretty, blurred and misty, orchid blossom “banner” thingy, which I would have left in place, except that it came with a semi-transparent plaque in the middle of it, extolling the virtues and advantages of using this particular Theme. While I agreed with them about how nice the Theme was, it wasn’t something that I wanted my readers to have to put up with, so I went looking for similar pictures in the same colours and tones. In the end I chose this one, and after about five minutes of re-sizing, blurring, colour manipulating, and various other arcane sleights of hand, I came up with a picture that was pretty close to the original, minus the blurb in the middle!

² when Julian had been taken ill at about 2.30 am and had to be rushed off to hospital in an ambulance, I’d shoved Sal, who’d been in our bedroom with us, into the Library with Satai, and locked them in, while I went off in the ambulance with Julian. I didn’t get back home again until nearly 10 o’clock the next morning. This morning I think Sal remembered this, and had visions of it happening all over again… It was very traumatic for him…

³ The tomatoes were washed, and roughly chopped into  smallish (but not too small!) chunks, and chucked into the largest pot we have. I added a medium-sized “fistful” of cooking salt – as much as you can reach into the salt pig and grasp in one hand (a typical Italian cook’s way of adding salt to anything that doesn’t give precise amounts!) then we added “about a fistful” of torn basil leaves, and about a cup, to a cup and a half of water, to “get things started” (tomatoes put out a great deal of water on their own) put it all on the stove, brought it all to the boil, and cooked the tomatoes, stirring occasionally,  for about forty minutes – or until reduced to a puree consistency. Once the mixture had cooled, Julian weighed the “passata” into plastic zip lock bags – 400 grams (the amount of crushed tomatoes you get in a tin) to a bag. Laying the bags flat in the fridge for a few hours to chill off, we then placed them in the freezer for later use.

05.00 pm

Well, I’m back again – after a bit of excitement last night! Sean had just left – I’d shown him the blog from this end, and everything was working just fine! Then I went into admin – just to have a quick look at a couple of Themes I’d downloaded, and I noticed that one of my plug-ins (the one that handles security and stats, actually!) had an “Update” flag on it… so I, ummm… updated it.

And everything stopped working!

Now remember, this is Word Press-dot-org, where you have to do all the maintenance and problem solving and fixing yourself, not Word Press-dot-com, where my old blog was – where they take care of things like this! We’re complete newbies at the moment – we didn’t even know what had happened! In the end, Julian “raised a ticket” with our Web Host, whom we’ve been with for about sixteen years (read: “stuck up his hand like a kid in a classroom, going “Oooh! Oooh! Help us, Obi wan Web Host, you’re our only hope!”) and then we sat back and waited! They’re in Queensland, and by the time we got that far, it was pretty late… still, they’re normally very quick to respond to nebulous requests, like “everything’s stopped working, and we don’t know why! Help!” and sure enough, they’d found the problem and fixed it by the time we got to our desks this morning. They very diplomatically told us that a plug-in (!!) had apparently “updated itself automatically” ( 😳 ) rendering it incompatible with the version of php that Word Press was using (or something) so they’d very kindly updated their version of php, and now everything’s lovely and working again! 🙂

So if any of you tried to “drop by” last night to read my latest Episode of “My Word! It’s a Really Strange Life with Winter”, that’s why you weren’t able to – and why I wasn’t able to even write it! :/ So, sorry about that one, chiefs…

Naturally, I was quite elated to get my dear little blog back on-line, but unfortunately we were going out, so once again – I had my hands somewhat tied behind my back! Julian had his appointment with his Specialist early this afternoon, to find out the results of his radioactive scan-thingy, and this time – seeing as my hair was looking really cool today (thank you Sean! 🙂 ) I was going with him. As Julian also wanted to pick up the Dry Cleaning, and get some more coffee over at Doncaster Shoppingtown, we left a bit earlier than we strictly needed to, and had our lunch over there. We arrived at the specialist’s surgery about ten minutes early, only to find that the Great Man had been held up in Surgery, and was running late! Thank heavens for Kindles! We eventually got to see the specialist, who told Julian that the condition that he’d been quietly confident that Julian had, wasn’t…. That is, Julian didn’t have this extremely rare condition after all, and that now we’re pretty much back at square one! (*rolls eyes*) He said that he could keep running tests, but that it would be pretty pointless, seeing that “the condition” isn’t present currently, and that we’ll just have to wait until it reoccurs – if it ever does (and sometimes it never does!) and either run the tests while it’s actually happening – or as close to that as possible! Ain’t science wunnerful! There he was, carted off in an ambulance, in hospital for two days (one of which was his Birthday!) had all the known tests done, and all of the results came back “clear” – so we still don’t know (a) exactly what it was, (b) if it could be life threatening or not, or (c) whether it’ll reoccur or not! :/

So because we had lunch over at Shoppingtown (it was only Toasties!) we’re having pasta tonight, with some of our very own home-made passata as sauce (cos we’ve run out of commercial gloop, and besides, I’m dying to try our very own, home-made – from home-grown tomatoes – pasta sauce!) I’ll let you all know what it was like tomorrow night! 🙂 Oh, we also bought some more fresh, sourdough bread over there, from Tree Frog – it’s called “Noir” (which is French for “black”, don’tchaknow!) We had it sliced for “toast”, and from the look of the slices (which you can see a bit of in the plastic bag) it looks black-ish, too, like a dark rye – a sort-of a very refined “Black Bread”. We’ll have some for lunch tomorrow, so I’ll be able to tell all of you about that, too, tomorrow night!

Mind you, I don’t expect to have much computer time tomorrow 🙁 We have an electrician coming over at 8.00 am to make some changes to our breaker box – we’re having extra solar panels installed on the roof, and getting in some sort of battery thingies, so the breaker box has to be “re-configured” to accommodate the extra bits and pieces – I could explain it all properly, but it would take too long as I’d have to get Julian to dictate while I typed… anyway, we’re doing all of this, not because we’re mad Greenies or anything, but so that we won’t lose our computers if there’s any sort of prolonged power outage – as seems eminently possible in the near future, with all the energy problems Australia seems to be having at the moment! So I’m making sure that my Kindle is fully charged overnight, and that all my important files are backed up and closed down properly by the time the electrician gets here, so he can turn the power off without inconveniencing us too much while he works on the breaker box – and an inside switch for the fountain by the front door! 🙂

My weight is still dithering between 74.0 kg and 74.5 kg, so at least I’m not steadily rising – but I’m wondering about my Warfarin intake a bit – I’m not due to have my next test until March 30th, but I’m getting a few unexplained – and unexplainable – bruises… Warfarin thins your blood, which means that you bruise much more easily than you normally would – but bruises shouldn’t just suddenly appear, especially when you can’t remember having bumped into anything hard enough to cause a bruise – and one definitely shouldn’t develop a bruise under one’s wrist watch! I’m keeping a close eye on my sudden and strange bruising, because people tend to forget – bruising is caused by damaged or broken blood vessels under the skin – it’s like a cur or a wound under unbroken skin – and you can also get bruised internally, where you can’t see them. In other words, you can be bleeding internally without knowing it, and this can be extremely dangerous for lots of reasons. I don’t really want to have to go and have my Warfarin blood test early in order to see if my INR is too high, but if I get another unexplained bruise, then I think I’d better.

All the fluffies and finnies are well – alas, no more pictures yet – I’ve been too busy dealing with running my blog independently – but bear with me, there’ll be more piccies soon. And that’s really about “it” from me for tonight! Do drop in again tomorrow night – hopefully there’ll be no more problems with the blog – but until tomorrow night, don’t forget to bee good, remember that money can’t buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you’re being miserable, and don’t forget to keep warm – or cool, depending on your preferences, to look after yourselves, and to always drive carefully… but above all, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

03.06 pm

Well, here I am again, on my bran’ nue site! Firstly, I was extremely pleased to find, and then be able to install and use, the very same Theme that I’d been using on my erstwhile WordPress.com blog, just before I left it to start this one – unfortunately, after getting everything all set up exactly the same way, with all the same graphics and everything, I found that it chopped my text off after the first six lines (but only the blog text – the other Pages are all fine!) with that hideously frustrating and annoying “Read More…” message. I really resent interruptions like that – it annoys me that there you are, you’ve gone to read something, but after a couple of lines it stops you, and asks you if you “really want to read any more of this?” Like, “are you sure? Are you really sure? You’re really, really sure?” [and in my imagination, just like that stupid and ghastly paper-clip thing that Word used to use, the “Read More?” interrupt looks surprised!] “Oh well then, if you must… click this, then!” I’m sorry, but it really, really offends me, so if I see that in the Template I’m using and can’t get it to display the full post, I won’t use that Template, no matter how nice the rest of it is me! Anyway, after going to all the trouble to set everything up the way the other one had been, then finding that wretched “Read More” message, being me I had to go and change the Template, didn’t I! Anyway, this is another of the Templates that I used “over there”, but this time I fear that I must apologise for the size of the text, however at the moment I have no way to change it.

(*sigh*) Because we’re unwilling to jump in and pay for a “Premium” Theme/Template (the only one I’ve seriously looked at so far costs €40! – there are cheaper ones though) where I would supposedly get a lot more functions and customisation thingies, I’m old and cynical enough to know that what they say you’ll get, and what you actually do get for your money, are often as different as peas and chocolate, so we’re looking around for a plug-in to give me a few more font functions (like changing the size of it, f’rinstance!) there are four which at first glance look “promising”, two of which are Google utilities which will probably be the way we’ll go – but that’s up to Julian, cos he knows what he’s doing, and I don’t. Stay tuned… 🙂

Well, apart from working away at learning new tricks with Word Press, I haven’t been doing terribly much. Julian’s been gathering quotes to have more solar panels installed on the roof, and I’ve been playing the odd bit of WoW – not nearly as much as I’d have liked, but checking out Themes and Templates is extremely time consuming. First of all, you have to actually read all the “small print” underneath the screen shot, to find out what the Theme supports – like how many columns does it support, if it has a customizable Header, etc., etc. (funny how it never tells you anything really helpful, like “supports extracts and full posts”, or “supports extracts only” 😕 ) Then you have to download and install it, run a Test or “Live” Preview – that is, set it all up, lock, stock and barrel, then view it through a browser window to see if it looks the way you want it to. If it all looks OK, you can Activate and Save it. It all takes a while, believe me, especially when you have to do it about half a dozen times to find one that’s suitable! 😐

Auric and Dapple are well – Auric’s tail is looking a little better – we still don’t know what he did to it, and we fear that he’ll have a scar on his tail for life – but it hasn’t seemed to affect his appetite, or swimming abilities – he just cruises around, nibbling at the gravel and the rocks and plants, the way he has since he moved into the Fish House! Both he and Dapple are getting so much bigger! I reckon that the two of them are easily three times the size they were when we brought them in from the mud puddle! Sal and Satai are both well too – and starting to eat “proper” cat food and pussy biscuits instead of the kitten mush they’ve had so far. Sal has reached his full size and – er – weight… actually, he’s um… “chubby”, and as lazy as his adoptive mother (me!) He’ll take three steps into a room, and flop over to have his tummy tickled! No, he won’t come to you to have his tummy tickled, you have to stop what you’re doing, get up, and go over to him, because he wants his tummy tickled, right now, slave! Satai is an “older teenager” now, tall and lanky, with great long legs… and clumsy and uncoordinated! He’s almost a little bit taller at the shoulder than Sal is, but unlike Sal, he’s still growing! He’s gunna be a big boy! He’s also as naughty as all get-out, to the point where I think I’ll change his name – permanently – from “Satai” (the closest we can get to the meaning of “Satai” is “Senator”) to “Denny” – short for “Dennis”, as in “Dennis the Menace”! He’s extremely beautiful, and looks so cute and innocent – but he’s a real “Bengal” in nature 🙂 into everything, bouncing everywhere, and poking his head into wherever it’ll fit (and sometimes where it doesn’t!) He loves playing with water, and I occasionally leave the water trickling in both my bathroom hand basins, because he prefers drinking fresh running water. His favourite toy is a small green “sausage” – about the size of a cocktail frankfurter –  filled with catnip. He has two of them (and a pink one, and a rainbow one, but the green ones are his favourites) and he trots around proudly with one in his mouth – he’ll play with them for hours – and when he does have the two of them together, he growls in frustration, because he can only carry one at a time in his mouth, and you can see that he just doesn’t know which one to carry, and which one to bat around the room – and under furniture, whereupon he peers under the whatever-it’s-under, and howls (true!) very loudly for “Daddy” to come and fish it out for him (which, of course, he does! 😉 )

I won’t get onto all the food bits just yet – everything’s been a bit out of kilter in that department, but we have been busy harvesting our vastly over-productive tomato crop, chopping them up, and cooking up vast quantities of tomato “passata” (which by the way, tastes awesome!) which instead of putting into preserving jars, Julian has vacuum-packed it into zip-lock bags, and stored them in the freezer! Today he took a whole lot of the tomatoes down to Moorabbin, to give to my very favourite youngest daughter, Kate. He’s been really working hard to earn himself enough time to make a loaf of bread, but so far, with everything we’ve been doing, we’ve been eating a fair amount of pretty tasteless commercial bread! 🙁

Weigh-in news: Well, as only to be expected, after Christmas, New Year, various Birthdays, and Easter galloping up fast, my weight hasn’t been… er… terribly cooperative! If it hasn’t been going up, it’s been going all over the place! Here’s a brief breakdown:

Monday, March 06th……………………………………… 74.5 kg
Tuesday, March 07th……………………………………… 74.6 kg
Wednesday, March 08th……………………………….. 74.5 kg
Thursday, March 09th (my Birthday!)………… 74.6 kg
Friday, March 10th…………………………………………. 75.0 kg
Saturday, March 11th……………………………………… 75.0 kg
Sunday, March 12th……………………………………….. 74.8 kg
Monday, March 13th………………………………………. 74.9 kg
Tuesday, March 14th (today!)……………………….. 74.0 kg

As you can see… not terribly good, plus it’s been up and down and all over the damn place! But at this stage I’m not too worried… one week after Easter, whether all the Easter eggs, chocolate, cakes, biscuits and other goodies are eaten or not, Julian and I will be starting out on our joint Optifast adventure. I’ll re-print out my old diet sheets and “free fruit and vegetables” list, and we’ll start. I both need and want to get down to 65 kg or below – approximately 10 kilograms-worth of poundage to take off – and Julian wants to get down to “wherever he feels best”, which is quite naughty of him! Without a proper goal weight to be striving for, I really don’t think that the Optifast project is going to work for him. I’m pretty sure that mine worked so well last time, mostly because I did have a particular goal weight fixed in my mental sights – like a shining beacon on a hill top – beckoning and encouraging me along (yeah, I know – it sounds really soppy – but that’s really pretty much what it was like – for me, anyway!) So, now you’re all up to date on where we are, weight-wise! 🙂

And that brings me up to tomorrow – I have an appointment at OPSM at 11.30 am to have my eyes checked. I finally decided what I wanted from Julian for my Birthday – a new pair of glasses frames! I’ve had these red ones for about six or seven years – possibly longer – and like me, they’re really starting to show their age, with discoloured patches where the frames touch the bridge of my nose and where they make contact with my eyebrows… So, that’s what I wanted. We went out shopping for them the other day and I found the ones I wanted at OPSM – hence the eye test tomorrow! The script for these lenses is (are?) nearly as old as the frames, and they’ve really needed changing for quite some time! The new frames are red too, but a vastly different red! These old ones are a sort of a pillar box/fire-engine red – the new ones are like that yummy, thick-looking “raspberry” duco that you see on some cars – the colour that makes you feel that you could spread it on bread, slather some cream on it, and eat it! Tomorrow Sean will be here again – he usually comes on a Monday afternoon/evening, but as Monday was a Public Holiday, he’s coming tomorrow instead… and a good thing too! I washed it myself the other day, and while the colour looks just as stunning, alas, it’s gone all out of shape and style! It usually doesn’t get this bad when I wash it, but I had to contend with two young cats, both of whom wanted to be in the bathroom with me. One wanted the water running so that he could play with it (which he did, with a vengeance!) and the other one wanted to walk up and down the vanity unit, watching everything – the not-so-skinny one – and he kept stopping in front of me, preventing me from being able to see in the mirror properly! In the end I had to get Julian to come and rescue me from their evil clutches, but by then the damage was done, and my hair – while nice and clean – is a real mess! And that’s really about “it” from me for this evening! Feel free to drop in again tomorrow night to see what my weight did, if my new glasses have been ordered or not, and how my hair looks after Sean’s visit 🙂 Until then, however, do try really hard to bee good, don’t forget that we live in a world where joy and empathy and pleasure are all around us, there for the noticing, and remember to always drive carefully, to look after yourselves, and to keep warm – or cool – depending on what you’re doing… but above all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

05.01 pm

Back again – as I said before – we’re getting there…. slowly! I’ve spent nearly all day “browsing” through various FREE Third Party Word Press Templates – this is one I found that’s also up for grabs on Word Press.com – so already being familiar with it, I thought I’d give it a bit of a go… It’s not bad, for what it is – that is, free, not Premium (which you have to pay for) so I don’t get much in the way of colour choice, and no choice at all in fonts ( 😥 ) etc., etc. but at this stage, we’re just feeling our way, so we won’t be delving into Premium for a while – sorry! 😕 I’m still not getting a full Editor, either – that is, I’m still having to remember to hit “SHIFT+ALT+j” to Justify my text, and CTRL+U to get underlining (rolls eyes!) I think it’s something to do with this latest version of Word Press software that’s just come out, version 4.7.3 – I do hope that the powers-that-be and programmers at Word Press wake up to themselves and give us our full Editorial commands back! I don’t have a handy-dandy Proof Reader/Spell checker function either, which is a nuisance, although it does pick up spelling “mistakes”, and allows me to add the correct UK English spelling to its Dictionary (thank heavens for small mercies, eh?!)

For the moment I’ll continue alone with these Freebies, and get everything set up the way I want it to be, then see about moving onto Premium, and proper fonts, colours and backgrounds, and whatever else one gets with Premium, but not the free Templates…

Anyway, more later – I just wanna go and play Solitaire for a while – I’m getting heartily tired of this, as I’ve been working on it since before lunch! 😉 Do drop in again tomorrow night to see if there are any changes, but in the meantime, do try hard to bee good, remember – biology gives you a brain, but life turns it into a mind – and don’t forget to look after yourselves, to always drive carefully, and to keep cool – or warm – depending on what the Melbourne weather is giving you at the time… but most importantly, please don’t forget to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂

02.21 pm

Here I am – my very first post in my very new independent Word Press blog! Still not quite there yet, but getting there… 🙂

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!