Tag: weather

It’s not the rain, it’s the humidity

We had another 25 mm of rain today. But the worst thing is that the humidity hasn’t dropped below 90% all day (since 7pm last night), and was hovering around 99-100% for much of it. It’s not particularly warm (only 20°C maximum), but it feels stifling.

Before heading into the university for tonight’s tutorial session, I walked with Scully up to my wife’s work to drop Scully there, and by the time I arrived I was dripping with sweat, all my clothes clinging to my skin.

The tutorial session was a little short, as not many students showed up, and after answering a few questions from some of them, they drifted off early. So I could head home before it was too late. Earlier in the day I was mostly handling the morning ethics classes, the final ones on the Greed topic. Tomorrow I need to write the new lesson plan for Monsters!

In entertainment news, I’ve been watching the Fear Street trilogy on Netflix. It’s been in my “to watch” list for ages, and I finally decided I was in the mood for a slasher flick, so I watched the first one last week. There are a few slightly corny things (to be expected from a slasher film), but mostly I’m finding it to be fairly smart and well made. I’ve finished the second film in the trilogy and plan to start the final one tonight.

And I recently spoiled myself by getting the special 40th anniversary Call of Cthulhu Classic 2″ Deluxe Boxed Set (available here, scroll down). This is a reprint of the original boxed set rules from 1981, with five of the original adventures. A classic piece of roleplaying history – I couldn’t go past it. I’m looking forward to reading through all of this!

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Games night Friday, and humid Saturday

Last night was board games night with friends, so I didn’t have time to write a blog entry. Most of the guys happened to have other things on, so only three of us attended. But this gave us a chance to play a long game, without worrying about people showing up late or leaving early.

We played Arkham Horror. Three turned out to be a good number for this cooperative game, where we’re pitted together against the Cthulhoid forces of darkness.

I took an investigator role, while the others played the muscle, and the mystical. My main task was moving around the map board and working to ward off Doom as it slowly accumulated in various places, while the muscle guy intercepted the various Cthulhu mythos monsters that kept spawning and trying to hunt us down. The mystic was searching for clues and artefacts to help us. The scenario we played was protecting Innsmouth from an incursion of Deep Ones, manipulated by Dagon and Hydra behind the scenes. We had to uncover enough clues to work out how to summon the malign entities and then trust that we could defeat them with a combination of muscle and occult knowledge.

After 3.5 hours of play which became increasingly tense, we confronted the main horrors and beat them, only to discover that we couldn’t figure out what the winning condition of the game was. The owner of the game later told us that he’d missed a single card in the setup stages of the scenario – and that card happened to be the one informing us of the winning condition! But we’d satisfied its requirements and won the game, even if we were confused about it at the time. It was a tight-run thing – there were several decisions that could have led us to disaster along the way, so it felt like a sweet, hard-earned victory.

Besides the usual online classes, I spent time yesterday and today doing Darths & Droids writing and comic making. Oh, and I did some major housecleaning today, doing a long overdue thorough dusting of everything in the living room, polishing up the wooden furniture, and vacuuming floors.

The other main thing to talk about is, of course, the weather. We’ve had more intermittent rain, and the humidity this week has shot through the roof, hovering around 80-100% at different times of the day. Sydney has had 170 rainy days so far this year, today being the 295th day of the year. The annual mean is 99 rainy days. Since we broke the annual rainfall record back on 6 October, we’ve had more than 200 mm more rain. The forecast is for rain every day for at least the next week, with some really heavy rain tomorrow. There continue to be severe floods in rural areas.

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Rain and mud

The weather wasn’t do bad today. We had a respite from the heavy rain.

I took Scully out for a drive for lunch, to go get some pies for me. We went to a place I discovered a few weeks ago, which has a nice park nearby where Scully could run around and get some exercise. Unfortunately I hadn’t counted on it being quite so muddy. I actually picked this place because it’s on top of a hill and I figured it would drain well. The edges of the grassy football field were a bit damp, but from there it looked like there was a slight rise to the centre of the pitch, so I figured that area would be drier, and set out with Scully in tow.

Big mistake. It may have been a little more elevated, but the grass wasn’t flat, but rather had a lot of bumps and hollows where water had pooled and turned the soil into mud. By the time I got halfway across the field it was clear the whole thing was just one huge bog. And now I had to get back out again without getting my shoes too wet, which was very difficult.

Scully was having fun running around though… spraying water behind her as she splashed through the mud.

When we got back to the car, I grabbed the dog towel from the boot and tried to wash her feet at a drinking station, but it was too fiddly holding the button down to operate the water flow and hold a wriggling Scully with only two hands. So I just wiped her clean as best I could, creating big muddy brown streaks on the towel, before loading her back in the car for the drive home.

At home I gave her an emergency foot and leg bath, rinsing all the mud off and drying her off before she could run around the house.

I worked on the usual comics and ethics classes today. This evening we went out for dinner, choosing to drive over to another suburb and park under cover instead of braving the walk up to the nearest shops in the rain that closed in late afternoon. We had galettes and crepes at our favourite French creperie. They had a special Black Forest dessert crepe, which I couldn’t pass up, being a big fan of Black Forest sweets.

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Rainfall record broken!

It’s been raining heavily here all day, and as of 1:10pm, Sydney officially broke therecord for wettest year in recorded history. The previous record was 2194 mm, set in 1950. The 1:10pm reading sent 2022’s total to 2199.8 mm (so the previous reading, at 1pm, would have been at least 5.8 mm less).

Here’s Scully after a 5 minute jaunt outside to do her toileting on the grass.

Scully after a walk in the rain

In other news, I did my income tax return today. (Australia files on fiscal years, so this is the for the July 2021-June 2022 year, and tax returns are due by the end of October.) My return was a bit complicated this year, because of income from various non-traditional-employment sources including Outschool teaching, selling print copies of my Irregular Webcomic! books, and selling photo art prints and greeting cards at market stalls and by Etsy, combined with all the various deductions for those things.

Overall it took me about 20 minutes to enter all the info and lodge the form online. It used to take quite a bit longer, but Australia streamlined its tax return system a few years ago. Now if you just have a regular job with a registered employer, you can basically be done in under 5 minutes.

One thing doing this reminded me about is setting up a sale on those Irregular Webcomic! books. After the Kickstarters, I had a couple of hundred extra copies printed, because they’re much cheaper in bulk, so I could sell them online. But after a couple of years the printing and distribution company (which is based in the USA) started charging me storage fees for the unsold books, so that’s been eating into my profits every year since. So I figured I should reduce the price and move them on sale. If this doesn’t reduce the stock enough, I’m going to have get them to just discard the remainder, as I don’t want to be paying fees in perpetuity for books I can’t sell (and shipping them all to me in Australia to store myself would be stupidly expensive). So… buy some books! They’ll make great gifts. 🙂

I also finished off my slides for the photography science presentation I’ll be doing for the university students. The lecturer decided it would be better if I do it on 17 October instead of 10, since the student’s first assignment is due this coming week, and they’ll probably have lots of questions and pay less attention to the lecture, whereas the week after they should be more attentive.

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More about Fun

Continuing my online classes on critically/ethically thinking about fun, there was another interesting thing that happened last night in the three classes I had. I asl this set of questions:

Is it okay to have fun playing a prank if the target person is upset by it?
Is it okay to play a prank if the target gets a laugh out of it too?
Is it okay to have fun with a prank if the target is neutral about it – they’re not upset at all, but they also don’t think it’s funny?

There seemed to be a bit of groupthink within each class, as within classes they were fairly consistent, but across the classes the answers all varied. Here’s what each group of kids said:

  • Class 1: It’s not okay to prank anyone if they are at all upset. It’s fine if they enjoy the prank. If they are neutral about it, it’s okay because at least you enjoyed it.
  • Class 2: It’s not okay to prank anyone if they are at all upset. It’s fine if they enjoy the prank. If they are neutral about it, it’s not okay because even though you enjoyed it, it was still at the expense of someone else (even if they weren’t upset by it).
  • Class 3: If the target is upset, but not too upset, it’s fine to prank them, because the total fun outweighs their small upset.

The most notable thing about today was the rain. The first day of forecast heavy rain arrived, and we have more ahead of us. I think we have a very high chance of setting a new annual rainfall record this week. Sydney’s highest ever recorded annual rainfall was 2194 mm, in 1950. Up to the end of September we’d recorded 2100.8 mm, plus another 11.2 mm in the first two days of October, taking it to 2112 mm, just 83 mm short of the record.

In the past 24 hours we’ve added another 30.2 mm, and it’s still raining solidly now. The forecast rain amounts for the next four days are: 15-20; 5-10; 30-40; 30-45. So even the low end of each day’s range will add another 80 mm, comfortably breaking the record. Watch this space.

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Labour Day

Today was the Labour Day public holiday here in New South Wales. But I didn’t get a day off – I had three online classes to teach, winding up the topic on the Scientific Method. I also did more work on my photography presentation for the university next Monday. And some work on Darths & Droids comics.

My last class ended at 1pm and I went for a walk with my wife and Scully, intending to drop in at a nearby grocery store to get some flatbread wraps (because my pick-up order from the supermarket on Friday was supposed to have a pack of wraps in it, but that item was missing, so I now had a bag of falafels to stuff inside wraps, but now wraps to put them in) and then go by the fish & chip shop for lunch. But partway there my wife reminded me that it was a public holiday and the fish & chips shop and grocery store would be closed. So we rerouted towards the railway station, where there’s a supermarket which would be open, and some food places that would be too. I got the wraps, but most of the food places at the station were closed, including the pie shop. So instead we went to a vegetarian cafe and got a… ahem… falafel wrap for lunch.

I went for a 2.5k run this afternoon… and that’s about the highlights of the day. It was a nice day, and tomorrow should be too, but heavy rain is predicted for Wednesday onwards, into next weekend. The top end forecasts for each day total 105 mm, and we’re within 100 mm of setting a new record for highest rainfall total in a calendar year, so it’s possible that record will be broken within the week.

Oh, and in sports news, the Penrith Panthers won the 2022 National Rugby League competition Grand Final last night. This is my team – I’ve been a lifelong supporter ever since I was probably too young to even remember any more, as I was raised in an extended family where we all supported Penrith. I attended many of their home games in my childhood, and at the time they were not a great team, losing more often than winning. But this is the second year i a row they’ve won the premiership, and although I’m not going wild, I am celebrating a bit on the inside.

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Spanish lunch and a long walk

This morning I did another 2.5k run. After that I was ready for a nice lunch, and my wife (who is off work this week) suggested we go for a long walk down to Blues Point to get a nice lunch at a Spanish restaurant there. We took Scully with us and enjoyed the fine sunshine.

It was sunny despite a forecast of rain, basically all day. I checked the hourly forecast, and it said rain at every hour of the day. But as I type this, it’s almost 9pm, and we still haven’t had any more than a few scant drops which we felt on the walk home. There are some storms hovering around Sydney on the weather radar, and severe storm and hail warnings in place, but where we are it’s basically been fine all day. Maybe we’ll get some overnight? It’s supposed to rain more tomorrow, but I’m a bit sceptical by this point.

Anyway, at lunch we had some tapas dishes: patatas bravas, grilled halloumi, empanadas, and fried gnocchi in a blue cheese sauce. The gnocchi were a bit weird – it looked like they were mashed potatoes put through the churros making machine and cut into small lengths, then deep fried. The servings were generous and we were very full afterwards. I haven’t had dinner yet – all I’ve eaten so far tonight is a few strawberries.

I also had three more online classes tonight about the scientific method. One was a bit of a struggle, with one kid’s connection constantly dropping in and out and me having to repeat a lot of questions. It’s always a pain when that happens.

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1980s roleplaying night redux, and a wet Saturday

Friday night I ran my 1980s kids adventure roleplaying adventure again, for my second subgroup of friends. It was the same adventure, but it proceeded very differently! Here’s a summary, courtesy of one of my friends who described what the second group (made of five players) did, for the benefit of those in the first group (to compare notes):

The B team went to gawk at whatever was happening at the lighthouse. We saw the dead body of the lighthouse keeper, who appeared to have been drowned for some time and then partially eaten. Mutterings in the crowd talked about this being similar to events 25 years ago. The lighthouse keeper’s dog came and befriended one of us.

We went to the back of the lighthouse, observing that it appeared to have been struck by lightning. We opened a window and took a look around inside. We didn’t see much at that time, but later when the police had left and closed the door we re-entered through the window and looked around the house itself. We read the logbooks and discovered that bad things happened to the lighthouse keepers every 25 years after a storm on June 1.

Back in town, we found out (I forget how, might have been from the fortune teller) that there was a shipwreck 100 years ago. We held a seance with the fortune teller and found out that the captain of that ship blamed the lighthouse keeper for the wreck and deaths of everyone, and somehow this translated into killing the lighthouse keeper every 25 years.

We were then transported to the past (one possible explanation, anyway), and managed to keep the light lit and avert the shipwreck. We were returned back to the present and found that the lighthouse keeper was alive and well after all. We returned his dog to him and got ice cream.

After he posted this on our group chat I mentioned that the first team’s adventure started the same way, but diverged at the word “opened”. Instead, the first group smashed the window with a slingshot(!), and then proceeded to climb through the broken window.

Both groups found a wet patch on the floor of the lighthouse tower (presumably where the lighthouse keeper’s body was found), but no clues as to how he died or who did it. The A team left and decided to check out the library to find out what happened 25 years ago. They found news stories from 1957 (25 years before the current date in 1982) saying the lighthouse keeper then was found dead under mysterious circumstances after a storm on the same date – and that 2 days later his dog was found dead. They continued looking back every 25 years, finding similar occurrences in 1932 and 1907. But in 1882, on the same date, was a storm that resulted in the wreck of the Warona, a cargo clipper. All hands were lost, except the cabin boy, one James Winchester. They used a phone book to look up any Winchesters in town, and discovered only one, living in the local nursing home.

The A team went to visit Mr Thomas Winchester, and discovered that he was the son of James Winchester. He told them the story of the wreck of the Warona, and that his father had told him how the lighthouse light had gone out as the ship was trying to reach safe harbour during the storm. They expected it to be relit, but it wasn’t, and without guidance the ship was wrecked on the headland. James suspected the lighthouse keeper was cowardly and didn’t bother to relight the lamp, thus causing the wreck.

The A team decided the logical thing to do was to go to Shipwreck Cove and try diving to take a look at the wreck. There they encountered a creepy ghost/kelp/thing that scared them. As they fled the scene, a storm whipped up and in a flash of lightning they were transported to the lighthouse in 1882.

From here the stories converged again. Both teams found the light out – and also that the lighthouse keeper had fallen down the stairs and was lying with a broken leg, unable to climb up to relight the lamp. (So it wasn’t his fault after all!) They relit the light and saved the ship.

The A team concluded their version of the adventure by going back to the nursing home to tell Thomas Winchester what happened, only to find that they had no records of a Winchester ever having lived there.

So, it was very interesting running this adventure twice with two different groups, and seeing the different choices they took through it!

Today, Saturday, the weather closed in. We have rain forecast every day for the next week again. Not too much here in Sydney, but further north parts of the state are getting hammered with hundreds of millimetres of rain again. These are the regions that have already suffered three major flooding events this year, and the ground there is still saturated, so even moderate rainfall is likely to trigger flooding again.

My wife and I took Scully for a lunchtime walk during a break in the rain, but it started up again halfway home and we got pretty wet, even with umbrellas. Scully was soaking, so we gave her a bath straight away.

We’ve also been planning a short trip. We’re going to take a drive out to Orange to stay for a few days in a couple of weeks. We found a hotel that has dog-friendly rooms so we can take Scully. We’re really looking forward to it! But today I spent some time going through all my Outschool classes and notifying parents and students that I’ll be taking a week off from teaching the classes.

New content today:

Drugs in sport Wednesday

This morning was Primary Ethics at the school. I started a new topic this week: Drugs in Sport. This is one of my favourite topics, because it really gets the kids thinking. They all start with the simple idea that performance-enhancing drugs in sport are bad, but then we very carefully pick that apart and examine where that opinion comes from, and why, and how well supported it is by rational thought in the context of all the other things that athletes do and the technology they use to gain advantages. By the end of it (the topic is 4 weeks long!), the kids have a much better appreciation for the nuances around the whole area of fair play and cheating in sport.

I dragged myself out for some sport myself, doing a 2.5k run after lunch. It was tough because it was very cold today. The storm and cold front that hit yesterday brought a real Antarctic blast from the south. We had snow on the Blue Mountains just west of Sydney. Even a dusting is a rare event, but this was heavy enough to close both of the roads across the mountains.

Here in Sydney the temperature sank to 7°C and stayed there until a couple of hours after sunrise, with the wind chill bringing the apparent temperature as low as -0.3°C.

Tonight I made soup for dinner: pumpkin, potato, and bunya nut.

Pumpkin, potato, bunya nut soup

Nice and warming! (Served with a blob of sour cream.)

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A late storm

The weather forecast for today was ominous: heavy rain beginning from around 8 am, totalling 10-25 mm. But it didn’t turn out that way. There was not a cloud in the sky when I took Scully out for a morning walk. And it remained bright and sunny all morning.

I took her out again for a walk and to get some lunch at midday, and it was still very sunny, and warm. Although it’s still winter, we got up to 22°C. But as we walked home, I could see dark clouds building up on the horizon. The cold front came through after 1 pm, and the temperature dropped rapidly to 12°C. But the rain was localised, and it didn’t start where I am until a couple of hours later, while other parts of the city were getting hammered. Now it’s raining steadily, and the temperature has dropped further to just 7°C, which is really cold for Sydney.

Besides watching the weather, today I worked on material for Friday’s roleplaying game. I used DALL-E to make an invitation image to advertise the game to my friends.

Agate Beach banner

I shared this with them. I also made a map of Agate Beach, the tiny west coast US town where the adventure is set. It’s a real town in Oregon, and I’m basing the game map on the real map, but with some modifications. I’ve also got some new ideas for how the adventure will flow.

And this evening I began the first three classes on this week’s new ethics topic: Friendship. One question I ask: Is it important that friends be of a similar age to each other? It’s interesting hearing kids discuss this. They’re 10-12 years old, and they can’t even imagine having a friend as old as 14 or 15!

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