December 2020 – dangermouse.net

Codenames progress

I forgot to say yesterday that my wife and I finally conquered the Bangkok city challenge in our ongoing Codenames Duet campaign game. It took us 13 attempts and was getting to be very frustrating, sometimes losing in a sudden death final guess that could easily have gone either way. We were so close to winning many times, but never managed to make it until finally yesterday we cracked it.

Today we moved on to try Los Alamos, and we won it handily on the second attempt. Hopefully this is a sign of more progress towards completing the campaign after getting stuck for so long.

Today is also New Year’s Eve. It’s a weird one, both weather wise with another in the seemingly endless series of cool, overcast, rainy days that Sydney is having, and also with the COVID restrictions essentially putting the kybosh on any sort of outdoor celebrations. All of the harbour foreshore areas that would normally be packed with a million or more people waiting to view the fireworks are completely off-limits and you can be fined for going there. The midnight fireworks display is still happening, but almost nobody is going to be able to watch it in person, and it’s been reduced from the normal 15 minutes or so to a compact 7 minutes. And the 9 pm family preview fireworks have been cancelled completely.

The Sydney COVID outbreak continues to grow in a worrying fashion. The locally acquired cases are up to 144, with 10 new cases added today. The numbers are hovering unsteadily and it’s still not clear what sort of trend we’re currently in. I think there’s a good chance that my next market date, on Sunday 10 January, will be cancelled. Which will be annoying, but better than risking public health.

I took a long walk today with Scully and my wife. We went down to the local golf course, which is a fair walk, and up and down a lot of steep hills. I drive there when I play golf, because it’s too far to go with a full set of clubs, but it’s close enough to walk to otherwise. And I took single club and a few balls, so I could randomly hit a few shots in between players on the course. Scully enjoyed being leash-free on the course. It’s a very casual course and many people walk through it with their dogs all the time, so there was no issue there.

And for New Year’s Eve tonight we’re having a simple night at home. We always do wine and cheese and crackers on NYE, and tonight we decided to skip dinner completely and add fresh fruit—mangos and strawberries and grapes—to make it basically a full meal. Pretty decadent, but it’s fun!

New content today:

Deconstruction for renovation

The construction noise started before 9 o’clock. One of the apartments downstairs is apparently ripping their entire kitchen out. There was pretty much continuous mini jackhammering noises all day, sounding like they’re chipping away tiles or bricks or something. It only stopped at 5 pm.

To get out of the house a bit, I took the wife and Scully for a drive to a bakery partway across the city. I was looking forward to getting one of their Mexican pies for lunch, a spicy concoction with beef, kidney beans, Mexican spices, sour cream, and cheese. I think it’s the best pie they do at this particular bakery. But unfortunately they were sold out! So I had to make do with a chilli beef, which is basically just a beef pie with some chilli pepper – no other spices to make the flavour more complex. Oh well. At least we got out for a bit, and it didn’t even rain.

Tonight for dinner my wife organised a table at a local bar, where we had cocktails and some share platters of sliders, tacos, arancini, etc. This was kind of our New Year’s Eve a day early, so we can avoid any crowds tomorrow night.

Otherwise today I mostly worked on Darths & Droids. The story is getting up to an exciting part in the writing, so I was keen to get more done today. I think tomorrow I need to start work on a new batch of Irregular Webcomic! scripts, for shooting photos next week.

New content today:

Series level

India won the second cricket Test against Australia today, levelling the series at 1-1. The next match is scheduled to begin on 7 January in Sydney, but because of the ongoing COVID outbreak here in Sydney, Cricket Australia is going to decide whether to go ahead or to move the match to Melbourne. They were meeting tonight, but have not yet announced any decision.

The game was a complete turnaround from the first Test, which Australia won easily. In this second game, India came back stronger than ever and absolutely destroyed Australia. So they certainly weren’t shellshocked by their defeat. These are two strong teams, so it’s going to be fascinating when they meet for the third game of the series.

Weather wise, it’s been a very wet day here, and cool. It’s almost not like summer at all. And there’s still no end in sight for the wet weather – the Bureau of Meteorology has basically warned everyone to cancel their New Year’s Eve plans as it’s going to be a soggy night.

Finally, I learnt today that one of my neighbours died on Christmas Day. Col was a retired gentleman who lived downstairs from us with his wife. I chatted with them a lot because we’d often run into each other around the building. But Col’s been sick with cancer and I’d seen him a lot less in recent months, mostly just seeing his wife, or their son, who had come up from Melbourne to be with his parents in this time. Col played golf at Lane Cove, the nearby course where I mostly play, and I used to see him in the park across the road from our place, hitting a few balls around for practice, and we’d stop and have a bit of a chinwag.

I’ll raise a glass for you tonight, Col.

New content today:

Boxing Day holiday Monday

Today was a public holiday, in lieu of Boxing Day since that fell on Saturday. Not that we did much anyway. I took Scully for a walk with my wife, but we didn’t make it too long, because there were storms incoming. We had some heavy rain in the early evening, and the forecast is for at least showers every day for the next week. It really is turning into a very wet summer.

I made some dough using the sourdough starter today. It’s rising now, and then I’ll put it in the fridge overnight to see if it turns out in a better state for baking tomorrow. Hopefully it’ll turn out better than the first attempt, a bit lighter and less dense.

In the cricket, India took a commanding lead today and virtually crushed Australia to a loss, although we managed to hold on to the close of play. It’s probably going to be over pretty quickly tomorrow though, with India levelling the series at 1 game apiece.

For dinner tonight I made myself pan-fried potato gnocchi with onions, a touch of chilli, and leftover Christmas ham. It turned out good, but a little dry, so I threw on some caramelised onion relish from a jar, and the result was amazing. I’m having to use either ham or turkey in all my meals to use up the leftovers!

New content today:

Back to COVID restrictions

Sydney moved back to the pre-Christmas COVID restrictions today, which means we can no longer visit my wife’s family. This lasts until 30 December, and what happens on New Year’s Eve and beyond is still to be determined. Sydney had 7 new COVID cases today. The outbreak seems to be mostly contained, but of course it’ll be another week or two before we really know for sure. And in the meantime the less people move around, the better.

My wife and I took Scully on a long walk this morning before it started getting hot. I’ve started using eBird regularly on my walks in the past few days, and it’s interesting to see just how many bird sightings I rack up in a simple walk around the neighbourhood. I don’t carry a camera, and a phone is usually not close enough to take a decent photos of birds, but I managed to get a welcome swallow this morning:

Here’s today’s list:

1 Australian brushturkey
19 Feral pigeons
1 Little pied cormorant
2 Little black cormorant
1 White-faced heron
3 Laughing kookaburra
2 Australian king parrot
41 Rainbow lorikeet
20 Noisy miner
1 Grey butcherbird
3 Australian magpie
5 Pied currawong
14 Welcome swallow

I didn’t do much else today. Watched the cricket match, cleaned up a pile of old papers and things that I’d been meaning to get to for ages. Fed the sourdough starter in preparation for making dough tomorrow, for baking on Tuesday. Played some Codenames Duet with my wife… we’re really struggling to win the Bangkok campaign game. We’ve attempted and failed 12 times now. It’s going to feel really good when we finally beat it…

New content today:

Boxing Day relaxation

It’s Boxing Day, and that means sport. Unfortunately the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race has been cancelled this year due to COVID, but the Boxing Day Test Match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground began on schedule. India are here this year, and this game is the 100th Test match between Australia and India. It’s the second game of the series, and Australia won the first easily, but today India looked well on top, so it might turn into an interesting series.

Other than watch the game on TV, I didn’t do much else. My wife and I took Scully on a walk during the lunch break, and we waked along the creek near our place all the way down to the harbour. It’s an amazing urban bushwalk, through fairly dense wet sclerophyll forest, tall eucalypts overhead and ferns at ground level. Although it’s surrounded by houses, it’s difficult to see them, and you can in many places easily believe you’re in a wilderness.

At one point we saw a couple of kookaburras on a tree limb, and they stayed there as we moved closer. I managed to get remarkably close and took the following photo, with my phone! – not even an SLR with a long lens:

I think they were young ones, waiting for their parents to come back with food. Pretty cool. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten that close to a wild kookaburra before.

New content today:

Christmas lunch, etc.

It’s Christmas Day. I slept in a bit this morning, but then got up to glaze the ham for Christmas lunch. We had a gathering of just 7 people at my mother-in-law’s place, to keep within the current COVID restrictions of no more than 10 people.

It’s a traditional lunch with roast turkey, baked ham, roast vegetables, followed by Christmas pudding. And chocolates and various other sweet treats. It’s very filling. For dinner tonight I basically just had a couple of slices of toast.

Gifts were pretty low key. Mostly people got comestibles such as mustards, sauces, pickles, chocolates, gingerbread shortbread, and so on. All stuff we know each other likes, and can use.

That’s basically the whole day. Merry Christmas from me, and Scully!

New content today:

Sourdough conclusion

It’s Christmas Eve, and that meant some cooking tasks. First cab off the rank was completing the sourdough Sourdough and Conjunctionthat I began yesterday.

After rising overnight at room temperature it looked like this (compare to the pre-rising photo from yesterday):

It rose nicely, more than doubling in size, but spread out and went a bit gooey. The next step was to try to manipulate it into a rough loaf shape on a baking tray. This was tricky because it had become quite sticky, and I needed a bit of flour dusting on my hands, and a butter knife to scrape it all off, but I finally managed to produce this:

I consulted my friend who’d gifted me the starter and he said it looked like it had been a bit overproofed. Which he said would make it sticky and not rise as much during baking, and quite sour, but should still taste good. He suggested letting the final rise happen in the fridge, which I did.

A few hours later I baked it, and after 40 minutes it turned out like this:

The bottom (not shown) was nice and browned, but the top had a pasty look. It was firm, and sounded hollow on tapping, which indicated it was baked properly, so I let it cool. Then came the moment of truth:

It was baked through, not doughy in the middle. Yes, it hadn’t risen much during baking, and so was a bit dense rather than airy. But cutting some slices and having them with a bit of butter…

It was indeed delicious! Nicely sour, and very more-ish. So it turned out edible and delicious, which is all I could ask for in a first attempt. My friend advised me to to try letting it rise for a shorter time next time, and then baking it in a hotter oven to try to brown the top a bit more. I knew sourdough would be a learning experience, but I’m happy to have achieved something worth eating on the first try. Hopefully things will just improve from here.

The next thing I had to do was make some mini-quiches, in preparation for Christmas lunch tomorrow. COVID cases have been apparently under control the past couple of days, and the NSW Government announced a slight easing of restrictions for Christmas Day, to allow people to gather with their families in the lower risk regions of the Northern Beaches (which is where my wife’s family lives). The high risk region is still under a strict lockdown, but what this means is we can travel to my in-laws for Christmas lunch as planned.

After I made the quiches, we did a quick run over in the car to drop things off, since tomorrow we’ll be wrangling an entire leg of ham. We drove over during peak hour, on a work day, on one of the most notoriously busy and congested roads in Sydney… and it was eerily quiet and deserted. Almost nobody is travelling into the Northern Beaches region, which is good to see.

Finally, Christmas Eve is traditionally the day my side of the family gathers together. But today with the various COVID restrictions, that wasn’t possible, so we had a big Zoom meeting instead. We had 8 separate groups, including my aunt in Germany, in on the call, and it was hilarious and fun.

It’s a bit of a weird Christmas Eve – one of very very few I’ve ever spent not together with my extended family. The end of a weird year.

New content today:

Sourdough and Conjunction

This morning I began making my first sourdough loaf. I started by taking 100 grams of my new starter culture:

I added 310 mL of water, 500 g of flour, and 10 g of uniodised salt, and mixed to form a dough:

The dough seems to have a good consistency. I covered the mixing bowl in cling film and have left it to rise overnight. By this evening it’s already risen a lot, I’d say doubled in size easily. But I’ll bake it in the morning.

The other good news today is that the clouds obliterating Sydney’s view of the grand conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn for the past week finally lifted today. Only they lifted higher into the atmosphere, forming a thin haze over the sky. Nevertheless, I went out tonight with my camera to see what I could, and managed to get a few photos. Here’s the best one:

You can see Jupiter, all four Galilean moons, and Saturn. Saturn looks elongated by the rings, but you can’t really tell they’re rings. Here’s the same photo labelled:

It was a pretty crappy view, honestly. Always through cloud haze, and sometimes the planets would disappear altogether as thicker cloud wisps drifted across. But it may be the best I get, because the forecast for tomorrow is more evening rain, and then rain every day for the next week. But at least I got to see it.

New content today:

No conjunction for you!

I’m sitting here just after sunset and wondering if maybe tonight’s the night I get to see the Jupiter/Saturn conjunction…

But no, the cloud cover is about 90% at the moment. I’ll give it another hour or so, by which time it’ll be too late. I’m not confident though.

I spent most of today working on the Secret Project, making good progress, but of course I can’t talk about it. I also fed my new sourdough starter, in preparation for beginning a loaf tomorrow.

That’s about it. COVID numbers were 8 new cases in Sydney today, continuing yesterday’s downward trend. No cases of mysterious origin. Hopefully this cluster is contained and the cases will die out over the next week. The real issue is that nobody knows what sort of restrictions will be in place in Sydney for Christmas Day. The NSW Government has indicated that if it weren’t for Christmas, we’d already be in a lockdown extending over that date, but they’re leaving any such decision to the last possible minute in an effort to keep things as open as medically advisable for Christmas. So we continue to wait and see.

New content today: