Summer heat and storms

Yesterday was online board games night with my friends. We played a bunch of the usual games, and I did very badly at 7 Wonders and 6 Nimmt, but was on the winning team for Codenames. Before games, I went out for dinner at the local pizza place with my wife and Scully. I ordered one particular pizza, but got served a different one – but it was actually the second option that I was tossing up between, so it was no big deal and I just ate it.

In the morning I picked up grocery shopping. I order online for in-store pickup, so I can choose my own fresh fruit and vegetables. When I got home, I discovered that they’d packed two dozen eggs for me, when I was sure I’d ordered only one. But I checked the order history, and yeah, there were two dozen eggs listed. So I must have mis-clicked when assembling the order. Oh well, at least eggs last a long time, so we’ll use them all before they go off.

And then I had four ethics classes, which ate up most of the day. After the first one I picked up Scully from my wife’s work and we went to the Italian bakery for lunch. I had a slice of mushroom pizza (so pizza for lunch and dinner!), and they had a special flaky pastry which was filled with pistachio custard, strawberry jam, and chocolate. It was delicious.

Yesterday was hot and humid, and so was today. But we had relief this evening when a big thunderstorm front came through. We’re still in the tail end of, it with a lot of lightning and thunder, but the rain wasn’t particularly heavy. We did have very strong winds for a while – the evening news said winds up to 90 km/h had been recorded in some suburbs. A lot of places have had power outages, over 50,000 residences. Probably from downed trees.

I did 2.5k runs yesterday and today, as early in the morning as I could manage, but it was still warm and humid and my times were slow. And I’ve been working on comics, trying to build up some buffer because of the ISO Photography Standards meeting which I will be attending Monday-Wednesday this coming week. I’m attending virtually; it’s in Japan so it’s not too far from my time zone, and it’ll be running 7am to 3pm, although Monday I need to miss the final session to travel to university for the start of the Data Engineering course I’m tutoring. It’s going to be a very busy week!

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Thunder and rain

Today was all about the weather. We had intermittent heavy rainfall all day, with some very loud rolls of thunder at times. Some suburbs of Sydney received over 100 mm of rain in one hour this afternoon, and there was flash flooding in many places. It wasn’t so bad where I am, but it was definitely torrential for a while in the mid afternoon.

I did manage to take Scully for a couple of walks during lulls in the rain, when the sun even came out, just to make it steamy and humid.

Besides my ethics classes, I worked a bit on preparing for tomorrow’s Dungeons & Dragons game. I made an invitation graphic using the picture from the front of the Basic Set rulebook that we’ll be using.

Invitation

I also planned out the pizza menu for the dinner I’ll be cooking while the guys roll up their characters. Looking forward to it!

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… and very wet

The humidity that was oppressive yesterday has really peaked today, and the clouds burst early this evening. We had 60 mm of rain in just over 2 hours, and it’s still coming down, with more on the way.

My day was filled with ethics class activity – teaching 4 classes, and in between writing a new lesson plan for the week beginning tomorrow (I update topics on Tuesdays). The next topic for the 10-12 age group os “Games”. I wrote a long scenario involving three kids playing a board game, punctuated by questions at appropriate events in the game. Here’s the beginning:

Tegan, Josh, and Adele are playing a board game together. They roll dice and play cards and move pieces on the board, chatting and laughing while they play. Whenever the three of them get together, they like to spend some time playing a game like this. They’re playing a game where the goal is to win. Only one of them can win – the other two have to lose the game.

  • If you’re playing a game like this, is it okay to be competitive – to try your very hardest to beat your opponents and make them lose? Why or why not?
  • Generally, it’s considered to be good to be nice and generous to people. What makes it okay in a game to deliberately try and make your opponents lose?
  • What about the opposite: If you’re playing a competitive game, is it okay to not try to win? Why or why not?

Tonight I made pizza for dinner – well, my wife made the dough and I did the toppings and cooked it. We do this once every week or two, but I mention it tonight because it turned out extra delicious today, with the crust nice and thin and crispy. Or maybe I was just really hungry. 😄

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So humid…

It was a very warm, overcast, and mostly humid day. The humidity barely dipped below 70% for one official reading mid-afternoon, but fr the rest of the days it’s been hovering around the 80-95% range. It was 92% when I did my 2.5k run at 9am this morning. We’re supposed to get storms late this evening, and tomorrow is forecast for around 35 mm of rain.

I worked on comics today for both Darths & Droids and Irregular Webcomic! And a bit more stuff to prepare for running D&D in a couple of weeks. Before finishing the evening off with three ethics classes. I had the last class of the older students discussing The Meaning of Life, and that was fun.

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A pretty wet Sunday

It rained most of today. The forecast was up to 30 mm, but in the end we haven’t received that much, more like 10 mm. Although the day’s not over yet. So we didn’t go on a long walk with Scully, and she got slightly stir crazy this afternoon, but nothing to worry about.

Mostly I worked on writing a particularly difficult strip for Darths & Droids, discussing alternatives, consistency with previously published material, and things we needed to get done as part of our planned storyline. It took a lot of hacking and redrafting before we achieved something we were happy with. Sometimes strips just flow, but sometimes they take a lot of hard hammering into shape.

Not too much else to report…. not much happens on a rainy day.

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And that may be the end of summer…

After yesterday’s warmth (barely above 30°C for the first time in almost a year), we had storms and a cold change overnight. Today was chilly and wet. When I took Scully for a walk at lunch I almost felt like I needed a jacket, although by the time we got home I’d warmed up.

I did my first ethics class today for older kids on the topic of “How to rig an election”. We went through some gerrymandering as a sort of interactive game, and then I showed them some real electoral districts in the USA to see what they thought of them. It was really fun and I think the kids enjoyed it and learnt a lot about the sort of sneaky tricks that politicians get up to. I want to post some of the diagrams that I use in the class here and walk through them, but it’s already late this evening and I don’t have time, so I’ll try to do it maybe tomorrow.

This afternoon I caught up on work for ISO Photography standards. I need to clear out my mailbox of documents and scan through them from time to time, and also keep up to date with meeting news, as our next meeting is coming up in Tokyo in February. I’m not planning to travel there, so I need to be on top of the agenda scheduling to make sure I can attend the most important stuff by Zoom, in between all my other things.

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30°!

Sydney finally hit 30°C today, for the first time since 20 February last year. It’s been a very unusually cool year, but we finally seem to be getting some decent warm weather, albeit already halfway through summer.

I braved the heat to take Scully out for a lunch walk and get some fish & chips. She was completely pooped by the time we got home! I put ice cubes in her water bowl and she lapped it up greedily.

Tonight we’re having a storm front move through, which will cool things down considerably for tomorrow.

I don’t have too much else to report today. I made a Darths & Droids comic, and taught three ethics classes tonight. Oh, that’s right – I spent time making some extra slides to present to the kids during the class, to explain the differences between user-pays and socialised health care, which I was having some trouble getting across to the kids verbally yesterday. I think they helped a lot.

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Rainy rainy day

Today was very rainy and even colder than yesterday – max 20.4°C. I even had to wear a jacket when taking Scully out for a walk.

This morning I picked up my grocery order. Unfortunately there was a missing item when I got home. This has happened to me a few times since I started ordering groceries online. The supermarket has a nice website interface for reporting a missing item, and they simply refund you the price without needing any further verification. Which is nice, but I’ve now had to do it enough times that I’m starting to get worried that the supermarket will think I’m taking advantage of it and blackball me from claiming missing item refunds. Hopefully it’s something that happens enough to many people that they know my instances are within statistical likelihood bounds.

I had more ethics classes today, and tonight is online games night.

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Ethics for older kids

Today I had my first class of online ethics for older kids (ages 13-15). I just had one student, and it was a kid I’d taught earlier in the 10-12 class. He’d stopped taking lessons several months back, but I contacted his mother to let her know that I had a new class for more mature kids and thought he’d be a good fit, and she signed him up.

The first lesson is on “Crime and Punishment”. We talked a bit about crime and why people commit crimes, and then concentrated on the idea of punishment. Why do we punish criminals? Do we as a society need to punish crime? What punishments are fair/unfair? Should criminals be given a chance to rehabilitate, or to live a life after serving punishment without prejudice? And so on. He really enjoyed it I think, exercising his brain on more difficult questions and ideas than I’ve done in previous classes. So I think it went really well!

The other main thing about today was the weather took a turn for the colder and wetter. It was very wintery, with a top temperature of only 22°C, also accompanied by wind and showers. Didn’t stop me going for a 2.5k run though!

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Lunch in the city

Today was cold. Really cold for December in Sydney. The temperature didn’t even reach 20°C – it topped out at 19.9°C. It was also windy, and there were a few drizzly showers, so it felt even colder – the maximum “apparent temperature” was only 14.7°C. Don’t forget it’s summer here. We’re supposed to be having days over 30°C at this time of year. Today actually felt like the middle of winter.

Despite this, we had to venture out to the city for a birthday lunch for my brother-in-law. We took Scully in on the ferry. Here’s a shot I took as the ferry approached Circular Quay:

Rainy December ferry trip

We disembarked and walked south through the streets to lunch. We passed through Martin Place, the central square in Sydney, where the city’s giant Christmas tree is:

Martin Place Christmas Tree

Before heading to lunch we stopped off at Hyde Park so Scully could run on the grass a bit and do a toilet.

Scully in Hyde Park

We also stopped off at a game shop to buy a copy of the second edition of Camel Up, that I’d ordered from them a couple of weeks ago.

While we were in there, a woman and her daughter, about 12 years old, came in and the mother was asking the staff for assistance with buying some Magic: the Gathering cards for the daughter, who wanted to start playing the game with her friends. The staff gave some advice about various decks they could buy. After the staff had finished the mother and daughter browsed around a bit and I approached and said I’d overheard that the girl wanted to start playing Magic, and I said I had an old collection with hundreds of old common cards that weren’t worth my while trying to sell, so I could let her have them for free. The woman was extremely grateful and I gave her my email address so she can contact me to arrange to pick them up some time. I was happy to help, especially for a young girl who wants to get into the game.

We had lunch at a French place, sitting outside because of Scully. Although we were under an awning, the drizzle got us a bit wet, and it was very cold in the wind. The food was good – I had a burger and chips, and then waffles and hot chocolate for dessert, which were both really good.

After lunch we walked back to Circular Quay to catch the ferry home again. Scully had a fun day out, walking through the city and riding the ferry. This evening she’s completely exhausted!

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