Two things that happened in the past few days, but which I forgot about when writing here:
1. Yesterday when I was out with my wife walking Scully in the early evening, we were enjoying the quite strong breeze that was cooling down the heat of the day. I didn’t realise quite how strong the wind had become until we happened across a scene on the street: Two young men were examining where a large tree branch had fallen onto the street, blocking it. It was a eucalyptus branch, and pretty substantial – maybe 4 metres long and the diameter of a dinner plate at the base end where it had splintered off the tree above. It was fortunate that nobody had been under it when it fell, as it could have been very dangerous.
But unfortunately the car belonging to one of the men was under it at the time. The branch had caught it at a glancing angle on the side, smashing the tail light and causing some significant dents and scrapes in the bodywork. The guys were maybe teenagers, and one of them looked at us as we approached. They didn’t seem to know what to do, and one asked me who would be liable for the damage to his car – would it be the local council? I answered that I didn’t think anyone would be liable, and the damage would need to be covered by his insurance.
We left then trying to pull the branch away from the car, but they weren’t having much luck as it was pretty heavy. This morning when I walked past the same spot, I saw that the State Emergency Service had come to chop the branch into firewood sized chunks and has piled it up by the side of the street, with emergency tape around it.
2. A few nights ago, I think it was the night of 30 December, I took Scully out for her pre-bedtime toilet. As I always do, I gaze up at the stars (assuming a cloud-free night). Orion is prominent in the northern sky at the moment, with red Betelgeuse at the bottom, and the bright blue of Sirius in Canis Major trailing it to the right. (This is upside down compared to what people in the northern hemisphere see, of course.)
Anyway, I was looking up at Orion, when I saw a very bright streak of light flash rapidly from east to west, just below the constellation. It was a meteor. I see them occasionally when taking Scully out, but this was one of the brightest I’ve seen. So that was pretty cool.
Today, I spent time assembling and writing annotations for Irregular Webcomic! strips for the coming week. I got stuck into some mathematics for one of them, so it took some time. I even had to break out Matlab to do some calculations.
For dinner I made quiche, with home made shortcrust pastry. Previously I’d been rolling the pastry cold from the fridge, and wondering why it always cracked around the edges. Searching the net turned up some advice to let it warm up a bit before rolling, and that seemed to help a fair bit, so I’ll do that from now on.
New content today:
