Enjoying the cooler weather

Oh, it’s so nice after the summer. It rained heavily overnight and was nice and cool today, with a few light showers. Also I noticed for the first time the ginkgo trees outside are just starting to turn yellow in a few of the leaves, the first real sign of autumn. They’re beautiful in mid-autumn when all the leaves are bright butter yellow. (Before they fall off and make a mess everywhere.)

I spent some time photographing piles of Magic: the Gathering cards before packing them for mailing this week. But mostly I worked on writing new Darths & Droids comics and making them up, trying to get a bit ahead of the publishing schedule. I also did some housework – getting the quilt out of storage and putting it back on the bed, since the nights are cooling down enough that a single sheet might not be warm enough soon. And I cleaned the bathroom and shower, and made some sourdough bread.

My wife spent some time today doing a one-day indigo dyeing course. She came home with about ten bits of cloth all died in different interesting patterns. She’s going to hem some and turn them into scarves. She said it as really fun to do. Next weekend she’s doing another class, on felt making.

Finally, if you want a puzzle challenge, try to work out the name of this restaurant this recently opened near me, from this logo.

Mystery restaurant name logo

Mystery restaurant name logo

I walked past it the other day and couldn’t figure it out until I went up and looked at one of the menus, which had the name written in a normal font. I’ll post the answer tomorrow.

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And so into autumn…

Friday was the first day of autumn, and thank goodness we have some cooler weather to look forward to soon. Friday was actually cooler than Thursday, but still plenty warm and very humid. I had four ethics classes during the day and I took Scully on a couple of short walks.

The Confession topic with the older kids is very interesting. It’s mostly about confession for things like crimes, breaking parental rules, or embarrassing secrets. But I touch on Catholic confession as a ritual of the church, describe it, and ask the kids what they think of it. The first two classes I had with this topic the kids all agreed that it is a useful thing to confess your misdeeds/sins and then have to show repentance and think about them, as it makes you more mindful of doing bad things and can make you a better person. But in Friday’s class I asked the same question and both of the kids in the class said it was rubbish, that it’s basically a get-out-of-jail-free card with God, you just get forgiven and go do bad things again without consequence.

Friday evening was online games night with my friends. We played a bunch of the usual suspect board games. My wife went out for dinner with some of her friends, so I had leftover fried rice from the night before, and I went up with Scully to the fish & chip shop to buy some fresh prawns to add to it.

Friday night was oppressive. The overnight minimum temperature was about 25°C, with humidity in the 90s, and a “feels like” temperature close to 30°C. By the time I got up and went for my 5k run, it was basically the same, and it was awful to run in – breathing felt like inhaling hot soup.

Today I stayed inside with the air conditioning and worked on writing a new batch of Irregular Webcomic! scripts. I managed to get that done, but will have to photograph it tomorrow or Monday.

For dinner we all went out for a short drive to Lane Cove shops and found a Mexican place there. The food was good, but a bit expensive. We were sitting next to a grassy area where lots of kids were playing, and there was a DJ playing music on a small stage. It was kind of fun, but a little noisy with everything happening.

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Last day of summer heat

29 February, leap year day! Also the last day of summer, and Sydney really turned it on for the occasion. We reached over 40°C in some suburbs, although nearer the coast it was thankfully a few degrees cooler. I took Scully for a walk in the morning before it got too hot, but it was hot and humid enough to be uncomfortable. At lunch I just took her out briefly and kept our short walk in the shade of the trees. We went out at the same time as our new neighbour with their dog Sophie, and the two dogs are getting along pretty well, keen to see each other and wagging tails in a friendly manner. They seem to want to play, but so far the neighbours have always kept Sophie on a lead. We let Scully off in the park across the street sometimes so she can play with other dogs, but the neighbours might not be confident enough to do that.

I had 5 ethics classes today, 4 with the younger groups and one on the new Confession topic with older kids. That went well, and generated some very interesting discussion.

For dinner I made fried rice. And I spent a bit of time in the afternoon trying to write new Irregular Webcomic! strips, but I was struggling to come up with ideas and it didn’t go very well. Also perhaps because it was such a warm day and even with the air conditioning on it made me feel a bit lethargic.

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A Monday off, sort of

I had nothing on my calendar for today. I used the time to work on a bunch of new comics for Darths & Droids. I wrote four strips, with help from co-authors, and made two of them. I could make another but it’s getting late.

The main exciting thing about today was the weather. The morning began thickly overcast, warming up with a stifling humidity. I took Scully for a walk at 08:30, and by the time we got home I had to change my shirt because it was soaked through with sweat.

The storm rolled in at midday. Thunder and lightning cracked across the sky. And then the rain pelted down. The gutters here overflowed within minutes, sending great sheets of water down past my windows. It was torrential. It eased off to steady hard rain, but intensified again and varied back and forth for about three hours. We recorded almost 30 mm of rain in those three hours. The storm caused flash flooding across the city.

There was a lot of lightning – the evening news said 75,000 strikes were recorded in the Sydney area. One of my friends’ office building was struck, shorting all the power including the lifts, doors, and fire panels. Nearly 20,000 homes were blacked out. And four people were struck by lighting and are now in serious condition in hospital. There were a couple of cracks of thunder that must have been lightning striking very close to my home.

It eased off later in the afternoon, and I managed to take Scully for a walk about 4:30pm, in just light rain. The creek in the park across the road was roaring with water. Normally it’s nothing more than a trickle. I wondered if our garage would have flooded again, but we’ve had new water pumps installed after the last time, and while there were some small pools in places there was no flooding.

I didn’t have any work for the day, but I did have to deal with a bunch of administrative emails from Outschool parents and kids, asking if there was a class today – they must have missed/forgotten the news that there were no classes this week. I had one ask for a refund for the missing class, unaware that they’d paid a week in advance for next week’s class, and last week they hadn’t been charged for this week’s (missing) one.

For dinner I made pizza with zucchini flowers that my wife had bought at the farmer’s market on Saturday.

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Mango weather

Last night was very warm, 25°C minimum temperature, with close to 100% humidity. We slept with the air conditioner on, which we never normally do. It would have been an awful sleepless night otherwise. The day warmed up slowly since it was overcast, but midday was around 34°C and so humid that the “feels like” was almost 40°C. I just stayed indoors as much as possible and only took Scully out for necessary toilet breaks.

I finished off the “Hoaxes” ethics classes today. I’ve started work on the next week’s topic, which is “Why?” – examining the idea of seeking reasons for everything. That one should be interesting.

After my last class we had a mango for dessert – a new variety that we haven’t tried before I keep tasting notes on all the different mango varieties, and this is the tenth one, a new variety here in Australia called Scarlet Delight. My tasting notes: Smallish, red skin. Firm smooth flesh, rich tropical orange-passionfruit flavour. Small seed with not much hair.

Not much else to say. I’m just relaxing now and waiting for this overnight cool change to come through. Tomorrow is supposed to be cooler and rainy.

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Writing about hoaxes

Wow, it was horrible during the night. The temperature barely got below 25°C – the minimum was 24.2°C at 2:30 am, and then it started warming up again. And it was nudging 100% humidity. Even though we had the air conditioner on all evening and turned it off just before bedtime, by 3 am it was so warm that my wife couldn’t sleep and we had to turn it on again.

The day barely got any hotter, reaching only 27°C, but the humidity was oppressive all day, with showers adding to the steamy moisture in the air. It should be a little cooler tonight but it’s ramping up to be a sticky, uncomfortable week ahead, with overnight minimums of 26°C to look forward to.

In other great climate news, the Bureau of Meteorology tells us that the current El Niño conditions are likely to end by June and head back towards another La Niña, the 4th in 5 years. Which means yet another cool, wet summer in store next summer. I was really hoping this summer would dry things out with some nice dry weather, but El Niño hasn’t even delivered that. Apparently the ocean temperatures are at record highs, resulting in a lot more evaporation, and humid air being blown over eastern Australia. I suppose this is probably the pattern as we move into the climate change future.

Today I wrote the coming week’s ethics class, on the topic of Hoaxes. I’m using a few well-known historical hoaxes to prompt questions: the Cottingley Fairies, Cardiff Giant, Great Blue Hill eruption prank, and Helicopter Shark. These run a nice gamut of reasons why people create hoaxes, why people fall for them, how they propagate, consequences of them, and how modern technology enables hoaxes, which we can discuss during the class. Should be a fun topic, starting tomorrow.

Finally, in a slight administrative issue, I did write a post last night, but when I scheduled it to publish just after my comics updated a bit later in the evening, I somehow accidentally changed the scheduled publish date from January to December, so it never auto-published! I’ve pushed it out manually now, which is why you may be seeing two updates at once today.

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Scorching hot Australia Day

It’s Australia Day, our national public holiday. But as every year, the debate and controversy over the day intensifies. I feel like it’s reached a point where it’s so uncomfortable for so many people that there’s no way the holiday can be saved. For years we’ve had a significant portion of the population campaigning to change the date away from 26 January. This time there’s now a noticeable shift and people calling for the holiday to be abolished altogether. Perhaps replaced with something else, but no ongoing holiday called “Australia Day”, even if it is moved to a different date.

Honestly, the momentum is so high and growing every year, that I truly think it’s just a matter of time. It’s predominantly older, conservative people who want to keep Australia Day as it is. The growing number of young people who have more progressive views on Australia’s colonial history are going to be the majority before too much longer, and it will be inevitable that the holiday is moved or changed or abolished.

I kind of wish it would happen sooner rather than later because the day has just become an uncomfortable thing that happens every year and people argue about it, or don’t want to talk about it. I think it’s really reached the point where our national day has devolved into almost what would be a parodic joke if it wasn’t for the fact that so many people find it genuinely offensive.

Besides the political heat over the day and what it means, it was physically hot. We reached 38.5°C in Sydney, over 40°C in some suburbs. But the temperature dropped 10 degrees in half an hour in mid-afternoon as a southerly wind came in.

My wife had a day off work for the public holiday, but I did my normal 4 online classes. We’re going to take Scully for a longer walk this evening in the cooler air as the sun goes down, and then maybe play some board games later in the evening.

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Busy day, weather ramping up

Thursday is teaching five online classes, leaving not so much time for other things. I took Scully for a longer walk early, before the day heated up too much, since the forecast was hot. I did my first lesson for the older kids on the topic of Employment, which went fairly well. The younger kids with the Gift Giving topic is a bit more fun. I had some interestingly varied responses today to the question of what to do with a gift that you find disappointing. Many kids say you should keep it anyway, but one this evening said you should sell it and use the money to buy something you like, since the giver would expect you to get some enjoyment out of it!

The heat is ramping up here for a forecast 40°C scorcher tomorrow, bang on time for the Australia Day public holiday (more about which tomorrow when I have more time to write). But there’s also concerns about Tropical Cyclone Kirrily, which was predicted yesterday to hit Townsville as a low range category 2 storm, but which today unexpectedly intensified to category 3, and which should be making landfall within the hour as I type. There are over 20,000 customers without power already, and repairs will take days after the storm. Over a metre of rain is forecast. Hopefully everyone up there will be safe.

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Not in hot water

Today I had a maintenance guy from the gas company come around to replace our hot water meter. This is a periodic thing they do every 7 years for all customers, to ensure the meters are up to date and working properly. They gave me a window of 10:00-12:00 when the guy would arrive. Of course, there was no sign of him until almost 12:30. Then it took half an hour to do the job. Meanwhile I was hoping that Scully didn’t suddenly need to go out for a toilet, as I would have had to ask the worker to leave while I took Scully out. I don’t want a stranger in our home while nobody else is in here.

But Scully was fine, and after the guy finished replacing the meter we went out for a walk. The morning was cool and cloudy, with heavy rain from about 6am to 9am. It cleared up, and by the afternoon it was warm and sunny, though not too hot. The next three days however are forecast to be heatwave conditions, with temperatures around 40°C across parts of Sydney.

There’s also the tropical low off Queensland which is expected to be declared Tropical Cyclone Kirrily some time tonight. It’s still tracking to hit Townsville, and forecast to dump over a meter of rain the next few days to a wide area still recovering from widespread heavy flooding.

I spent much of the day writing new lessons for the new week of ethics classes. I have split topics for the two age groups this week: Gift Giving for 10-12, and Employment for 13-15. I managed to complete both of them by mid-afternoon, which is really good going. I also cleaned up the laundry a bit since that’s where the hot water meter is, and threw out some old cleaning products that we were unlikely to use. So that felt pretty productive.

For diner tonight I made calzones, filled with broccoli, pumpkin, and ricotta. Topped with a chilli and garlic tomato sauce, they were really good.

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Hottest day of the year (so far)

It’s all about the weather at the moment. Sydney had its hottest day of 2024 so far today, reaching 40°C in some suburbs. But it was cooler near the coast, only reaching about 34°C here, thankfully. Western Australia has been suffering an even worse heatwave, with the town of Paraburdoo reaching a record 47.9°C today, and predicted to be around the same tomorrow.

The other weather of interest is a tropical low system off the coast of Queensland, which is forecast to develop into a cyclone of at least category 3 strength, and will probably make landfall somewhere around the city of Townsville late in the week. This means more torrential rain for northern Queensland, which is still suffering flooding from ridiculous amounts of rain over the past few weeks. It seems like they can’t get a break up there.

Today I basically stayed indoors in the cool of the air conditioning. I took Scully for a short walk in the middle of the day, not going very far. It’s also tricky because the roads and footpaths are baking hot in the sun and I have to keep picked her up to go over areas with no shade, to avoid burning her paws. She’s not keen on that and wriggles to be put down, despite the hot surfaces.

I finished off writing a new batch of Irregular Webcomic!, and photographed some of them, but not all of them. I wanted to quickly make enough for this coming week, and will finish off photographing the rest of the batch during the week.

My ankle is still a bit sore, but seems to be feeling better today. I didn’t go running, to give it a chance to recover. Also it would have been awful running in this weather! So in a way it was nice to have an excuse not to.

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