Secre

Well, either I'm cursed or the game is rigged. I have been - rather impatiently - waiting for the Altador Cup to start, and amusing myself - or frustrating in fairness - by trying to get the Solitaire trophy. I wasn't sure how I hadn't got it already. Well, now I do. I have played 85 hands, won 2 of them and nearly won say 10 of them. For the rest, the game seems to delight in deliberately giving me cards I cannot use or - worse - giving me cards I could use if they were a different colour, but can't use as they stand! At the rate I'm going, I'll be calling it quits with the bronze trophy!!

Not me - my foster parents! I'd love to foster, but we don't yet own our own house or have our own children and I'd like to know that I'm bringing a child - particularly such a vulnerable one - into a safe, stable and committed home. At the moment we don't even have a dog for exactly that reason! We both work full time, I commute four hours a day when not working from home for the COVID-19 pandemic - and that wouldn't be a fair environment to bring a new life into. But yes, my foster parents are definitely unsung heroes. They went from me - a difficult if intellectual teenager - to an exceptionally disturbed young child and then two toddlers (at the time obviously), one of them with significant additional needs. Throughout it all, they have shown the patience of saints and have worked through every challenge, if not without complaint then certainly without any flagging in commitment and effort.

Thanks for confirming - I likely should have thought about that before I made the pet, but it didn't occur to me as the word isn't an obscenity or anything! This made me smile... yes, I can see something like that being the reason!!!

I am awful at betting in general I admit and so I've been using http://www.neopets.com/~Boochi_Target as my base for my bets. On days when he admits to taking risks in advance, I'll take a look at http://www.neopets.com/~Innocent to see whose odds I like best. If you're not following someone else's bets, the general advice seems to be to always put your maximum of 10 bets down - and if you want the big payouts then to do so to the max np your account will allow - as you can then 'straddle' the risks. But I've been playing for less than a month now and below are my returns: That includes today's bets and my complete losses of yesterday when I knew I shouldn't have followed Garet (Boochi) and did so anyway as I was doing it off my phone and was too lazy to get another page up!!

It was gone within twenty minutes of me creating it from the time on the neomail, so I wouldn't have thought anyone would have TIME to report it! Possibly - I didn't think of the beer connotations. I only drink proper ales like Abbots, Hobgoblin and Doombar so Corona holds no interest for me!! Still seems strange though - I mean there must be thousands of brands of beer and they often have fairly neutral names!! Oh drat and botheration! It's typical. I have a closet full of junk and I had to put a decent item on him!! Hopefully I get a decent win on the Gourmet Club today and I can buy it back guilt free. I suppose I got a free fire paint job in picking my new fire Flotsam up from the pound, so I shouldn't complain... not that it's ever stopped me before!! Garet put in a duplicate bet today, so I replaced it with a long shot worth 1,000,000np if it comes through - which admittedly, I doubt it will!! Thanks for locating it for me - I was trawling through databases looking for 'hat'... didn't think to try 'bonnet'. As an additional update, I have created a new Koi and named him SneezlesForNeezles instead.

So I admit; I created a Koi and I took a bit of a liberty with naming it. I often create and name pets to remind me of people or events - so several pets are named for individuals and akcornBA is my intials made into a word followed by my graduation honorific. In light of the lockdown I created my little Koi and rather tongue in cheek named him Coronaville. Promptly gave him some clothes and wandered back to work: Came back to my account to find this: I suppose I broke rule number 5? 5. Neopets is not the place to discuss "heated topics" or world issues I think that's the first official warning I've had in well over ten years ever since I sent a message with a normal word in it that apparently got flagged on their filters because it contained another word in the middle of it. Admittedly, I cannot now remember what the word/s were! I have also lost the two non-NC items the pet was wearing annoyingly. I am not going to risk emailing the Neopets team in case my account actually gets locked. I know the AAA Host Cane - annoyingly 8000np to replace - but can't remember the name of the hat. Any ideas?

In terms of this family, I think my additional issue is that they monetised this child for their own ends; she has gained deals with companies for her blog, has become an 'expert' in the field of international and special needs adoption. And it was clearly all a lie. She painted a picture of a perfect life to her hundreds of thousands of followers and used that image of herself and her family to make money. There;s something very wrong about that. There are references to potential safety concerns but I can't buy that - even if the child is violent, he is less than five years old. At no point should be left unsupervised with a younger more vulnerable child anyway!! She can be living in a different place - treatment facilities for example - and still be their child; a lot there depends on how they are handling this and knowing nothing about your friend or the case I can't comment. What I will say is that my foster brother - all three younger children are adopted, I'm fostered as I was a teenager when I came into their home - has been liming in a facility for behaviourally challenged young men shall we say for several years now. He legally - and let's be honest, morally - cannot be in the same house as the girl. My foster parents still consider him their son even though he cannot live with them - in order to prevent him being put in an unsuitable placement, my foster father moved out of the house to live with him for close to twelve months before this placement was found, they have visited every weekend and ensured he still feels part of the family. One of the twins has cerebral palsy - also due to in utero exposure to alcohol and drugs - and has required a lot of additional support. Now admittedly, the UK system means they knew exactly what the condition was when they adopted her, but they knew they were adopting a child with additional needs and have moved heaven and earth to get her the support she requires. But treatment facilities are a very different ball game to washing your hands of a child and saying, here's your new mummy. Yes. And to bring the boy over from China, knowing he had significant additional needs only to then hand him over to a new mummy. She's just taught that young boy that he is disposable and her biological children that children are expendable, especially if they have disabilities. I'm almost hoping China charge them with a crime. Unfortunately US extradition laws would could a crimp in that.

I've always considered that if you take on the responsibility for adopting a child - special needs or no - then they are your child, pure and simple. You don't get to hand them back if life gets difficult. I've been lucky enough to grow up in a loving biological parental home where when things went sour due to addiction issues, my foster parents who took me in as a teenager - and a hellish one at that - have stuck by me through thick and thin. I have just however read about an 'influencer' couple who raised funds from their blogs to adopt a child from abroad and have given up on him and fobbed him off on another family. This makes me both sad and angry. Who brings a child in from China with special needs and then rehomes it like a puppy when the going gets too tough?? Hell, I know all about difficult adoptions - my foster parents have that in spades with me, a son who later abused one of their younger daughters and twins, one of them with moderate cerebral palsy - but would this couple 'rehome' one of their biological children if they developed issues!? https://metro.co.uk/2020/05/28/youtuber-myka-stauffer-sparks-outrage-rehoming-adopted-4-year-old-autistic-son-12768327/

It turns out I'm clearly in an impulsive mood this month as I wandered across to the pound for a looksie and immediately found this poor fire Flotsam languishing there unloved. So I took him home with me. Because that's perfectly normal right!?

I've had three 'bank errors in your favour' totaling about 2500np so far and another random event where my active pet found 5500np on the floor! Is it Random Event Day or something!?

Whoot whoot whoot!! I had already started to edit it for re-submission as I am a natural pessimist!

Ooh! That's pretty!! (And cheap!) Thanks! Also on the list!

I've joined - I had a choice between Darigan, Maraqua and Lost Island as I've supported each twice, plus Roo Island one year strangely.... - and am impatiently waiting for the fun to begin. Give me a week of playing the same game over and over again and it'll be a very different story, but for now I'm stoked and ready to go!

I quite like the Steampunk. More so than the other Steampunk varieties so far anyway!

I fell in love with those bookends on first sight and used a significant chunk of my spending money on them but it was definitely worth it!! And yes; I might be tempted to have a couple of 'real' books that are either particularly cute or pretty, but by and large I think it would be better to have a gallery that is predominantly non-readable items as it makes it so much more unique.

Everyone's tips about the Food Club made me go and check it out. With a 16 and a half year account, I've made over a million in a couple of weeks!! Had two days with zero return that made me doubt, but every other day I have made my money back and then some. Made something like 400,000np yesterday alone as a decent odds bet came through for me!! Previously I'd relied on flash games and dailies which is so very slow in comparison!

Bah! Still aggravating. Thankfully, I have started following Boochi's food club betting which is making me a stack load more np than flash games ever did!

Not as of yet... I haven't seen it announced anyway...

I've been debating what to have as a second gallery since I rejoined neopets. I have the rather commonplace plushie gallery on my main which I wouldn't change for the world as it was the first collection I started on neopets and is a mirror image to my bear collection in real life. But it's hardly unique! Just collecting books seemed to have the same issue and reading is one of my other passions, but those paving stones gave me the idea of a book theme that didn't just focus on actual readable items. Like at home I have these gorgeous Slytherin basilisk bookends that I bought from Orlando (attached image). Pity I can't find a neopets item bookend! Ooh, excellent idea!! That hadn't occurred to me at all but you are right! And I've even been caught out when buying them before! So yes, that's definitely a category to go on the list!

So, I found a really cute paving stone of all things at the Igloo Garage Sale: Brightvale Book Paving Stones This has given me the idea for a library inspired gallery on my side account. Actual books are the obvious contenders and I can use the books my reading pet has already read as a starting point - with over 1000 books under his belt, I'm not going to struggle. However, I was thinking of having more items like the paving stones - so items that are inspired by books or libraries but not actual readable items. So there's the Library Faerie Stamp, Library Visit TCG, Xandras Library Background and several NC items that I am unlikely to ever get my mitts on if I'm honest, but does anyone have any other ideas. Specifically items that are inspired by or depict books but aren't actually books.

https://thedailyneopets.com/altador-cup/rank-calculator is last years numbers and if you divide them by the number of days you'll get the basic amount. I don't know if this years have been released yet. A lot will depend on how long it runs for etc I suppose as I think last years was longer than usual...

As a heads up both Kass Basher and Zurroball have been changed for the better with easy 1000np this month. Crisis Courier has also haken a significant leap needing only 3030 odd points for the 1000np instead of 10,000 points and Sophie's Stew is standing at 520 points for the 1000np. On the downside - near enough all the games I play normally have been changed for the worse. Sutek's Tomb, Meerca Chase, Turmac Roll, Bouncy Supreme, Dubloon Disaster, Ice Cream Machine, The Usul Suspects, Faerie Caves II and Barf Boat to name but a few all require significantly higher scores. Most of them achievable, but far more time consuming. Hey, at least my attention will be taken by the Cup...

It's definitely worth putting in the effort from what I remember as the prize shop tends to be quite lucrative at the end!

I definitely prefer the relic to the stone. It's quite entertaining really looking on how far they have come with designs. I was showing my mother in law the maraquan lutari I want, and she immediately pointed out some of the earlier pets and asked why they were so basic when the lutari is so detailed and that's the same paintbrush!

Well, hey ho. Looks like the Altador Cup is about to go live for this year. It's been a while since I took part in the Cup but it doesn't look as though anything has changed! Still the same four games at least!! I had a glance at my old trophies for the cup and I seem to have split myself fairly equally between Lost Desert, Maraqua and Darigan Citadel the years I've played (with one strange year choice of Roo Island...) so I don't have a consistent team to go root for but have jumped towards Darigan again this year. Here's hoping I don't get called back to work now... that would really put a spanner in the works!!