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.

New content today:

Repotting chillis and a new game expansion

This morning I took Scully on a long walk, around down by the harbour shore. The forecast was hot, so I didn’t want to take her out for long at lunch time, and got her walk in early before the roads heated up too much in the sun for her paws. I did a bird count on the walk and recorded 13 species. None of the slightly more interesting water birds like cormorants, herons, or ducks today. A lot of sulphur-crested cockatoos though, screeching loudly – those ones can really make a racket.

When I got home I photographed the remainder of the latest batch of Irregular Webcomic! strips that I started working on last week. Then I turned to making a new Darths & Droids strip.

I also repotted the new chilli plant we bought a few days ago. I had a terracotta pot from the previous good chilli plant – not the scrawny recent one that never produced any chillis. I put the new plant in there to give it more room to grow. Of course this meant spilt soil al over the balcony, so I had to clean that up. I also gave the lime tree a thorough cleaning – the leaves get dirty with dust and grime so I wiped them off with a wet cloth.

This evening I did the first three ethics classes on the topic of Gift Giving. One of the most controversial questions was on regifting. Some kids thought it was fine if you didn’t like a gift to give it away to someone else, or even just throw it away, while others said you had to keep it, but maybe stick it in the back of a cupboard or something.

New content today:

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.

New content today:

Finishing off minor laws

Monday is the last day of the ethics class week, and I finished off the topic on “Minor laws” today. It’s been a very interesting topic, with a lot of diverse opinions and observations by the children in the various class groups.

The main thing we discussed was jaywalking, but we also touched on other laws that many people break such as littering, speeding, gambling, and one that came up with a few of the kids who live in Singapore—chewing gum. Some of the kids are very averse to law breaking of any type, and said people should absolutely not jaywalk, even if you’re running late and it’s perfectly safe, while other kids were very gung-ho and said it was fine to jaywalk as long as you can see the traffic and have enough time to cross. Among the latter group there were many differing opinions on what makes it okay to jaywalk illegally: that it’s safe, that you’re not hurting anyone, that it’s inconvenient to wait for the light to change if you’re in a hurry, that you’ll get away with it without being punished, and that everyone does it. These were all given as justifications. Overall, a fascinating topic, and I think the kids really enjoyed it too.

There wasn’t much unusual to report about today. The weather cooled off dramatically overnight and today was temperate and mostly cloudy, reaching only 24.9°C. It’s going to stay this way for a couple of days before becoming very hot again at the end of the week.

My twisted ankle feels a lot better – basically back to normal with no discomfort. I might try a gentle run tomorrow evening to test it out.

Oh, I bought a new chilli plant to replace the one that I got back in September. That one has failed to produce any chillis, or even flowers, and is a decrepit wreck after being savaged by insects. It’s in stark contrast to the first chilli plant I bought years ago which was robust and strong and producing chillis within a few weeks of purchase. The small supermarket up the street had a selection of plants with chillis already forming on them, and I decided to grab one and throw the old one out. They were listed at $12, and even if I just cut the existing chillis off and it never grows any more that will be well worth it. And then the cashier rang it up for just $6, so that’s even better!

New content today:

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.

New content today:

New neighbours and old ankles

Friday was board games night at a friend’s place, so no post yesterday. I arrived just in time to join a game of The Guild of Merchant Explorers, which was new to me. It was a fun game of exploring across a personal hex map (each player had an identical map), establishing towns and trying to connect trade routes to earn coins. I liked it, but I ended up significantly behind everyone else, finishing with about 130 coins while all the other three players were within a few coins of each other around 150.

After this we played a game of Mysterium, at the medium difficulty level. I was going really well, guessing my character and location quickly, but I got stuck on the weapon, guessing wrong 3 times and ultimately being the only player not to correctly get all of my information! Being a cooperative game, that meant we all lost, alas.

Then we finished off with a game of Just One, which I’ve played a lot online, but never with the actual boxed game equipment. That went pretty well and we scored a lot of matches.

Another thing that happened is I met one of our new neighbours, who moved in this week. It’s an older couple, retiree age, and they’re from South Africa. I met the woman and she met Scully, and was delighted to meet her. She said that they had a Maltese terrier and a cat, but they are in quarantine after arriving from South Africa and wouldn’t be moving in until February. When they arrive we’ll have to make sure Scully meets the dog and becomes friendly.

Today I slept in a bit and then went for a 5k run in the relative cool of the morning. Unfortunately at one point I had to step off the footpath to go around a clump of pedestrians and I twisted my ankle on the grass. It wasn’t bad at the time and I finished the run, in better time than my last couple of runs. But through the day it’s gotten more sore and swelled up a little bit. I’ve started putting ice on it to reduce the swelling and inflammation. But I doubt I’ll be doing a run tomorrow. I can walk okay, and in fact we did a couple of long walks today with Scully, but I don’t want to risk running on it.

We went over to Naremburn after lunch for a sweet treat from the bakery – I got a cinnamon roll. And then we went out again for dinner, to a seafood restaurant that we really like. I had mahi-mahi, which was really nice.

I spent a few hours today refining an adventure for next Saturday’s Scum & Villainy game that I’ll be running at the local science shop. I’ve found a one-shot adventure outline for Blades in the Dark, and I’m reskinning it from fantasy to science fiction in the Star Wars setting. It’s coming along nicely, and hopefully should be a lot of fun.

New content yesterday:

New content today:

I’m ready for this humidity to end

This weather is so tiresome… it’s just so humid every day. Temperatures aren’t so bad, getting up around 30°C in the middle of the day, but the darn humidity is pretty much pegged on 100% all night, and only drops to around 70% in the heat of the day. Overnight rain doesn’t help at all as it simply steams up the air the next day when it heats up. I checked the past few days and the humidity hasn’t dropped below about 70% at any time for the at least the past four days. Probably longer, as that’s as far back as the detailed hour-by-hour records go on the Bureau of Meteorology website. So I’m just spending as much time as I can at home with the air conditioner either on cool (in the middle of the day) or dehumidify mode (in the morning and night).

I did take Scully out for a couple of walks, because of course she needs the exercise. At lunch we went up to the fish & chip shop, which has reopened this week after an extended closure over Christmas. I got my usual choice and we went to the high park overlooking the harbour to eat (as opposed to the low park down by the waterside, which is a bit further away).

Apart from that, 5 ethics classes today, and a bit of comics work, and that was pretty much it.

New content today:

Spinal update and heavy rain

This morning I worked on some more Darths & Droids writing. It never ends!

After lunch I had an appointment with my neurologist, following up on the spinal injection procedure I had before Christmas. The numbness in my left leg seems to have been partly relieved by the injection, improving slowly over the past few weeks. I’d say it’s about 50% back towards full sensation now, so a noticeable improvement, but still not back to normal. I told the neurologist this, and she said that this showed that it was indeed the L3 nerve causing the issue. Which is a good thing, because it’s not something else that might indicate more severe problems. She said at this stage the most sensible option is just “wait and see”. It might slowly deteriorate again over the next few years. She also said that if I notice any other symptoms like tingling or numbness anywhere else in the body, I should get it checked up straight away. But for now it seems there’s no serious ongoing issue, as it’s simply minor loss of sensation, with a pinpointed cause, and no effect on any muscles.

And as a bonus, she didn’t even charge me anything for the consultation!

I walked back home via my wife’s work to pick up Scully and take her home. I wanted to hurry a bit because there was incoming rain on the weather radar, to get home before it hit. We made it, and it’s a good thing because it really set in. It’s been raining steadily, sometimes heavy, for the past several hours. It won’t be fun later when I take Scully out for her pre-bedtime toileting. I use a big umbrella and try to stand over her to shelter her from getting too wet, but inevitably there’s some towelling off when we get back inside. It’s been a ridiculously wet summer so far, and seems to just be rolling on. All over Eastern Australia – there are ongoing flood issues both north in Queensland and south in Victoria, but we seem to have missed most of the major floods so far.

I made fried rice for dinner. We were out of the usual vegetables like broccoli and carrots, so I did it with a lot of celery and some chopped Brussels sprouts, which seemed to work okay.

And tonight was the first three classes of my “Minor Laws” ethics topic. I had some interesting discussion with some of the kids, and quite varying opinions on whether it’s okay or not to break laws that thousands of people break every day without caring about it.

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Patatas bravas

I tried making something new for dinner tonight: patatas bravas!

Patatas bravas

Excuse the messy presentation. I mixed the potatoes and sauce in the bowl and didn’t tidy it up afterwards. I basically used this recipe from the BBC. It turned out pretty good! But potatoes really do take a long time to crisp up in the oven, gosh. I got a bit impatient, and could probably have left them for another 10-15 minutes.

I took Scully for a long walk this morning, since I had time and the weather was cloudy and cool.

At home I spent time writing a new class for this week’s online ethics lessons. The topic for this week is “Minor Laws”. Some example discussion points for the kids:

One important difference between serious laws and minor laws is that a lot more people break minor laws. People who commit murder are quite rare, but there are many thousands or millions of people who drive too fast, or litter.

• Why do so many people break such laws?

One thing about minor laws like these is that most of the people who break them never get caught or punished in any way. They get away with it.

• If it’s safe to cross the road when the light is red, and you’re not going to get punished for it, does that make it okay?
• Is it okay to break a law that lots of people break and never get punished for?

(some stuff about enforcement and why minor laws are poorly enforced here, which I’ve cut for brevity)

Unenforced minor laws are sometimes used as a way to punish people for something else. For example, in a city where nobody usually gets punished for jaywalking, the police could set up an operation where they monitor street corners and give jaywalking fines to people they don’t like the look of: immigrants, or homeless people, or people of certain skin colours.

• Could this be a serious problem if we start enforcing minor laws more?
• Is there any way we can ensure that the enforcement of minor laws is fair and unbiased?

This evening I had free so I went for a 5k run after my wife got home from work. It wasn’t hot, but it was very humid (97% according to the Bureau of Meteorology) and that meant a slowish time, although better than the runs I did on the weekend, which were similar humidity but hotter.

Last night I watched The Running Man (1987), which was new on Netflix here recently. I thought I might have seen it before, since I watched many of Arnie’s films in the ’80s, but I found to my delight that it was unfamiliar. I had to laugh at the fact that it was set in the dystopian future of 2017, and that 2017 apparently still had a very ’80s aesthetic, with dancing women in high-cut aerobics leotards and big hairdos, and computers that were no smaller or more advanced than what could be found in the 1980s. It wasn’t especially profound, being an Arnie action flick, but it was a lot of fun. Bonus points for featuring Mick Fleetwood as a freedom fighter. I was really not expecting that!

New content today:

Very rainy cabin fever

Rain came in overnight and it was very, very heavy. It woke me up a couple of times during the night. We recorded over 60 mm in the city centre, and up to 150 mm in some inland suburbs. It continued into late morning, so I didn’t take Scully for an early walk – we just ducked outside quickly for her toileting and then she wanted to run back inside. She’s not keen on rain.

I had 4 classes, and worked on Darths & Droids scripts a bit. For dinner I made pastry for quiche, and decided to try it with finely chopped celery (since we have a lot of celery at the moment) and I also added some nutmeg. It turned out all right.

My wife and I took Scully for a longer walk in the evening, when the rain had stopped, although it was still very grey. Not an especially interesting Monday, I’m afraid!

New content today: