scully – Page 6 – dangermouse.net

Scully grooming day

Scully was looking a bit scruffy and shaggy recently, which means it’s time for her haircut/groom at the dog groomer. I picked her up from my wife’s work at lunch time and took her to the groomer, then collected her with her new haircut a few hours later. We can see Scully’s eyes again!

Otherwise it’s been another fairly busy and exhausting day. I had my face-to-face ethics class at the school this morning. After 5 weeks of teaching this, there are still about half a dozen kids on the roll who I haven’t seen yet – maybe sick for the past 5 weeks? I’m not sure. Thankfully the kids who have been showing up are pretty good and the class runs smoothly, mostly. There was an incident today though when a teacher poked her head in and told us to open the windows for ventilation, and a kid ran over and did it… and a fly screen fell out of one of the windows, dropping two floors to the ground below! The kids thought this was hilarious, and several ran over to look out the window and see where the screen had fallen. I sent two of them out to go retrieve the screen and bring it back. I didn’t bother trying to reinstall it – I just told the regular classroom teacher about it when he came back after the class.

Oh, there was something amusing after the class too. The room I have is next door to the Anglican scripture class, and on the far side of that is the Catholic class. The kids all split up to go to their relevant scripture class (or ethics), and return to their regular classrooms afterwards. While I was leaving I overheard some kids talking outside:

Did you know Mary was a virgin??
What?
Yeah, she was a virgin, but God stuffed a baby up there anyway!

On my way home from dropping Scully at the groomer, I stopped at the bakery at Naremburn to grab a sweet treat, since I was driving past. I like popping in and seeing what new items they have – they always seem to have something new in the rotation. Today they had what looked like rocky road tarts, which I confirmed by asking, and a delicious looking individual cakes topped with icing and coconut shavings, which turned out to be mango cakes. I had the rocky road tart to eat while sitting outside at the cafe tables, but then I decided I’d go back in and grab a mango cake for dessert tonight, because who knows how long it will be before they appear there again!

New content today:

Scully’s grooming day

Today I dropped Scully off at the dog groomer for her regular clip.She was getting quite shaggy, but now after the grooming she’s trim and velvet-fuzzy again.

In between I did my last couple of ethics classes for the topic of Artificial Intelligence. I did some comics stuff. And now that I’ve finished off the paper proofreading that occupied last week it’s time to start working some more on the data engineering course that I’m helping out with. This week I need to produce some exercises for students to do on summary statistics and data presentation, and also make some graphics for the data visualisation slides for the lectures.

This involves writing some actual code for the first time in ages. Both Matlab, and also some Python to massage some of the raw data downloads I’ve found into better shape for exercises.

Oh, and when I was outside doing stretches in the park across the street after my run, I saw about a dozen ravens circling right above my home. I can only presume this means something ominous. And for reference, I know that our place is built on the site of a former church, which must have been demolished to make way. So… it’s entirely possible that the place I live in is built on a former graveyard…

Maybe I’ve been watching too much horror on Netflix.

New content today:

Meeting the new dog neighbour

That noise that had been keeping me awake all night seems to have disappeared. I haven’t noticed it for the past few nights, and have been getting decent sleep again. This does play into my theory that it might be a fan that someone is using on hot nights to help them sleep, because the weather has turned cooler for the past few days. I guess I’ll see if it returns again when the weather warms up again, as it’s forecast to do over the next week.

This morning I had the first lesson in a new session of my course on Creative Thinking and Board Game Design. Only one student, when I was hoping for more, but he’s a slightly older kid at 14, and seems very interested in what we were doing today. So I think this will be a fun and successful instance of this course over the next 5 weeks.

The new downstairs neighbours messaged today to suggest we meet up at 3pm on the grassy courtyard near our building. We got there first, and then they arrived a minute later. Their dog is a female cavoodle named Billie, and when she and Scully saw each other, they immediately wanted to go closer and say hello, with tails up. That’s a little unusual for Scully, who is normally a bit shy with new dogs, so that’s a great sign. The two of them played together on the grass while my wife and I chatted with the new neighbours – mostly about our dogs.

It turns out they know the previous tenants of the apartment they moved into. They’d met up at one of the local dog parks, and our previous neighbours had actually suggested to them to move in here after they’d moved out. Anyway, they seem very nice people, and now that Scully has met their dog Billie, this afternoon she was noticeably calmer when Billie made noise downstairs. It should improve more over time so Scully will be as relaxed as she was with the previous dog downstairs.

New content today:

The dreaded hiatus, and tidying up

After yesterday’s cogitation on the matter, I decided I had to take a brief break from making new Irregular Webcomic! strips, in order to get some higher priority things done. My buffer has run out, and I just didn’t have time today to photograph new comics – and I really want to reserve some time this week to work on other things. So I’ve officially declared a hiatus of at least one week, during which I’ll rerun old comics instead every day.

The work I need to get done, specifically, is to get cracking on the course notes for the university data engineering course that I’m helping my friend to redesign for the upcoming semester. We have a deadline near the end of February, so I need to schedule some time to do the work that the university is paying me for! This means comics have to fall by the wayside for a little bit, but hopefully it shouldn’t be too long. I’ll try and squeeze them in some time next week if I can.

It’s the combination of having to do this, plus restarting my online teaching stuff again this week, plus my wife starting work-from-home again last week due to COVID, that have all added up to a lot of distractions.

And there are of course other things that are usually too trivial to mention here that eat up parts of each day as well. Today I gave myself another COVID haircut, with a bit of help from my wife to tidy and even things up a bit after I’d hacked my own hair enough. And we gave Scully a bath – the first one since her groom just before Christmas.

Oh and we all went on a walk up to a doctor’s office for my wife to get her COVID booster. I’m booked in for mine next week, and I’m just trying desperately not to catch the disease before then. The case numbers are skyrocketing like crazy here in New South Wales at the moment, as omicron is defeating our currently relatively feeble attempts to control the spread.

Our government appears to have just given up trying to slow it down, and rather just hope that the hospital system can withstand the strain. Australia’s infection rate per capita is now above both the UK and the USA, for the first time in the entire pandemic. They said we had to avoid any further lockdowns for the health of “the economy” but apparently they didn’t realise that with so many people off sick the economy was inevitably going to suffer anyway. Supply chains for food have almost ground to a halt, and supermarkets are struggling to keep anything stocked. When I bought groceries last Friday, there were no oranges (which I wanted), and almost no apples, and short supplies of many vegetables. Reports this week, both from my friends who’ve been shopping and the media, say that supermarkets now have virtually no fresh fruit or vegetables left at all, and meat is in short supply. The shortages are expected to last at least another few weeks. We’ll see what’s left when I do the next grocery shop on Friday. Fortunately we still have a COVID lockdown pantry box with non-perishable food that could last us about 3 weeks if we absolutely had to.

New content today:

New Year’s Day 2022

My wife got tired and went to bed early last night. I stayed up a bit later, but still went to bed and finished reading before midnight, although I heard the fireworks going off before I drifted off to sleep.

This morning was a brand new year. It was a moderately warm, but cloudy day. I took Scully out a couple of times, and in between I worked on Darths & Droids comics. I did a bit more random housecleaning stuff, though nothing as major as the last two days. I baked some sourdough. I made enchiladas for dinner.

And we worked with Scully and her Picasso Paws art kit that she got for Christmas!

You place blobs of paint on a small canvas, then seal it inside a ziplock bag which has been smeared with peanut butter on the outside.

The dog then licks the peanut butter, smearing out the paint on the canvas inside the bag.

When done, cut and peel off the bag, revealing the artwork!

It was a lot of fun, especially for Scully, who loves peanut butter. And painting.

New content today:

Brainstorming a new thinking course

I’m operating on very little sleep today. Scully woke up about 2 am, retching, and I heard it and jumped up to get her to a relatively easy to clean spot before she vomited. After cleaning up, I tried to go back to sleep, but Scully had another bout of retching, although this time nothing more came out. Then she wanted to go outside, so I had to get dressed and take her out to the grass. I waited quite a while in the cold winter night while she chewed on some grass. I thought she might toilet, but she didn’t, and eventually I coaxed her to come back inside.

A bit later, before I’d fallen asleep again, she started retching again, bringing up a few blades of grass. She continued being restless and attracting attention, including wanting to go outside again about 5 am. So I got to see a bit of the sunrise, though I never got back to sleep again. Scully refused to eat any breakfast, and spent most of the day refusing to eat and acting lethargic.

Thankfully by this evening she’s perked up again and she ate her dinner with gusto, so whatever had her tummy upset seems to have passed without further incident. Hopefully she’ll sleep through tonight and we can catch up on sleep.

For lunch today I walked over to the fish & chip shop with Scully, then took my meal out to the lookout over the harbour. The lookout spot is usually empty, but this time there were a few other people sitting there. I grabbed spot on the terrace at the stop of the slope, with the others on the seats behind me. There were two ladies there, I estimate around 70-ish. I overheard some of their conversation:

Lady 1: Do you want to go see Spider-Man: No Way Home?
Lady 2: I forget what happened in the last one. Was that the Spider-Verse?
Lady 1: No, that’s a different story. In this one Spider-Man saved the world but revealed his secret identity, and now everyone blames him for what happened. So in this new movie he goes to find Dr Strange to reverse people’s memories.
Lady 2: Oh, sounds good. I liked Idris Elba – he was the one with the eye patch?
Lady 1: No, that was Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury.

This afternoon I worked on a course outline for my planned Outschool course on creative thinking. After giving it some thought and hacking around with the structure, I’ve written a full description for all 6 classes in the planned 6-week course. I’ve run it past some friends, and it’s almost ready to go. The last step is to make a graphic, and then I can put the whole thing up on Outschool for approval as a new course. Not sure if I’ll get to that tomorrow, as I still have to write this week’s new ethics class notes.

New content today:

Down at the wharf

Today was fairly routine. I picked up my grocery order form the supermarket, and again stopped to buy three punnets of super cheap strawberries, like last week. I made some comics. I did a couple of ethics classes.

At lunchtime I went for a walk with my wife and Scully, down to a nearby wharf.

She’s so photogenic.

She’s looking very shaggy at the moment, because it’s been a long time since her last groom. She’s booked in for another on tomorrow.

Tonight is the regular fortnightly games night with my friends. We have a special treat tonight, in that one of the guys has written a trivia quiz for the rest of us to play. We’re going to divide into three teams and fight it out for trivia supremacy.

New content today:

Winter storm incoming

Any story of today has to be about the weather. After yesterday’s 27°C winter heat, the cold front moved in overnight, bringing rain and cold. Today’s maximum temperature was recorded at 6:02 am, at just 11.4°C, making today the second coldest day of the year (10 June was just 10.3°C). It’s now 8 pm and Sydney has recorded 37 mm of rain in the city, up to just under 50 mm at the airport. The rain is expected to get heavier tonight, with accompanying gale force up to storm force winds. Wind gusts are already up to 70 km/h on Sydney Harbour. There are fears of beach erosion with the high seas that may threaten some coastal properties.

While this was unfolding today, I had a bunch of stuff to deal with. When we moved in here, there was an in-sink garbage disposal unit, for mulching food scraps into the drain system. I’d never lived with one before, but we started using it and got used to it. But last week it gave up the ghost, the motor seizing up. I called a plumber to see if we could just get it removed and replaced with a regular drainage pipe. No problem! And home repairs are one thing that is allowed to continue under our current COVID lockdown rules, so this morning the plumbers arrived to do the job. Rather than just replace the disposal unit, they redid all of the pipes leading from the double kitchen sink to the drainage port in the floor, replacing the semi-clogged trap and the old pipes that would threaten to start leaking a some point with brand new ones. The sink drain holes also have shiny new grilles in them. And there’s more space inside the cupboard under the sink where we store all the cleaning stuff and other things (watering can, toolbox, light bulbs, candles, matches, etc), so we used that to clear away some stuff off the kitchen bench. Overall a big win!

Then at lunch time I had to go pic up the car from some minor repairs. The repair place is about 20 minutes walk away. In the pouring rain and freezing cold. They had to pick the one day of the week when it was the absolute most miserable to be outside. Well, I took advantage of having to walk over there to stop in at a pie shop on the way for some lunch. As well as repairing the car they’d washed and detailed it nicely. Which didn’t last long…

Back home, I used the newly repaired car to take Scully to doggie daycare. And brave the rain again. In the afternoon I actually did some productive stuff, writing my class notes for this week’s new ethics topic: Fairness in Sport.

Then in the early evening I went to pick up Scully. When the rain and wind had intensified. When she goes to daycare, apparently she has so much fun playing with the other dogs that she completely forgets any need to pee or poo, with the result that as soon as I pick her up she has to rush to the nearest grass and relieve herself. With the rain coming horizontally and my umbrella threatening to turn inside out. And then once both of us were thoroughly wet we climbed inside the car to head home.

Here’s Scully on a sunnier day, last Saturday (bandana by Scully xo, my wife’s Etsy shop):

For dinner tonight I tried something new: sourdough pizza dough. I’ve been making pizza dough for a while now – it’s incredibly easy and I don’t know why I didn’t try it earlier. This time I tried adding some leftover sourdough starter to the mix to see how it works, and it turned out really good!

New content today:

Double century day

It was really all about the COVID here in Sydney today. NSW recorded 239 new cases, which is now the highest number of cases reported in the state in a single day, beating the previous record of 212 which was set during the worst outbreak last year.

Today’s daily press conference was very raucous, with a lot of reporters asking why Sydney wasn’t locked down faster and harder, and if the government had failed. Victoria got up to a high of 723 cases in one day during Melbourne’s horror outbreak last year – exactly one year ago to the day. The Victorian government enacted the strongest lockdown measures Australia has seen, closing down basically every retail shop except supermarkets and pharmacies. We’re nowhere near that here in Sydney yet – cafes and restaurants are still open, albeit for take-away food only. The NSW Government is facing increasing criticism that it’s not doing as much as Victoria did last year.

Where we go from here, who knows? They’re saying they hope to be able to lift the lockdown restrictions by October. Hopefully, yes. But maybe we’ll have another Christmas where we can’t see our families.

More personally, my wife and I have a big significant wedding anniversary coming up before then. Originally our plan was to celebrate it with a trip to Europe. A month or so ago, I was looking into booking a fancy restaurant so we could at least have a nice dinner out. Now I think we may end up celebrating this anniversary sitting at home.

In other anniversaries, this sign has been in the lift of my apartment building for a year today:

In some final good news, it’s taken her over three years, but Scully has finally learnt the pleasure of snoozing in a winter sunbeam:

I’m very surprised she’s never done this before. I figured dogs would be like cats and be all over this, but I guess not.

New content today:

Vaccination and Doctor Who

One of the family got vaccinated today. It was time for Scully’s annual vet checkup and booster shots. Her appointment was at 2pm.

The daily COVID press conference by the NSW Premier was at 11am, so we watched that – 111 new cases in the last day, which is not good. They also announced a new set of lockdown restrictions. People living in the three worst affected local government areas (i.e. administrative areas covering roughly 20% of Sydney) are now forbidden from leaving home to go to work, unless they work in health care or emergency services. People with any other job cannot travel to work at all. My brother lives in the affected area, but I’m in a different part of the city.

They also announced that non-essential retail shops are not allowed to open, and released a list of what is considered essential: food, health, maternity, baby, and pet supplies; hardware, agriculture, and office supplies; banks, finance, and post offices. Every other retailer must close to shoppers – though they can offer online ordering. Additionally, all construction projects other than urgent repairs have been shut down, so construction workers will no longer be travelling to work.

These new restrictions last until 30 July, but may be extended if necessary. This is now, finally, slightly more restrictive than the lockdown we had at Christmas last year. Whether it’s enough to halt the spread of the Delta variant, we’ll have to wait another two weeks to see.

After the press conference, we went for a walk with Scully. The weather was sunny, but very cold and windy. The maximum temperature today only reached 14.6°C, and we had wind sustained around 40 km/h with gusts over 70 km/h, so it felt bone-chillingly cold. When we went out I thought we were doing a quick walk and coming back home, so I could have lunch before my wife took Scully to the vet. But it turned out she intended to stay out the whole time, and go to the vet on the way home! We ended up doing a huge walk – I think Strava tracked it something over 8 kilometres.

I left them near the vet just before 2pm and went home and had lunch. The vet is only doing contactless consultations. A nurse comes to the door and takes your dog, and you have to wait outside. It was like this last year too for her previous annual checkup. But the report was good, Scully is in perfect health, and has had her booster vaccinations.

Tonight my wife and I (finally) watched the last episode of the new Series 12 of Doctor Who. This is the most recent series they made, aired in 2020, but we missed it on TV, and have only now caught up on DVD. It took a little to get into Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor, but I really like her now.

New content today: