April 2021 – Page 2 – dangermouse.net

An overdue walk

I worked on my secret project a bit more today. But more interestingly I went for a nice long walk after lunch. The weather has been really nice lately, with cool and crisp autumn days making for nicer weather to be out and about than the heat of summer. The maximum today was a very pleasant 23°C, under a bright blue sky.

I went for a long stroll to the Italian bakery a couple of suburbs over. I was craving a slice of their baked ricotta cake, which is truly amazing. I deliberately walked a slightly roundabout route rather than the most direct one, because I’m filling in gaps on my Fog of World map. When I reached the bakery I got my slice of cake and sat and enjoyed it, before heading home again.

Again I chose to walk along streets I hadn’t covered in Fog of World, and I found an amazing back lane behind two rows of houses facing the other way, where their garages were. Several garages along this lane had murals painted on them.

They included a short story painted on an adjacent wall, explaining the mural, and were all signed by an art collective.

It’s amazing what you can find within walking distance of your home that you might have been completely unaware of before.

For dinner tonight I made pizza, with hand-made dough from scratch. Last week I found that the supermarket had fresh mozzarella in a little pouch with whey, so I bought one, intending to make a Margherita pizza. So on my walk today I picked up some fresh basil as well, and some cherry tomatoes. When I got home I roasted the tomatoes to intensify the flavour, then set them aside until ready to bake the pizza. Here’s the topped pizza before baking:

And here it is ready to serve with the fresh basil placed:

It was delicious!

New content today:

Secret busy-ness

I worked on a secret project today, so I don’t have much that I can report here.

The weather was nice. A sunny autumn day, not too hot, not too cold. More please!

New content today:

Market Sunday

We got up at 6:00 this morning to pack the car and head to the market at East Lindfield. Previously I’d been hiring a car for this venue, so I could fit all my gear and stock into it. But this time I tried making two trips in my own car, which is enough to carry all the stuff. The venue is about 15 minutes drive away in early Sunday morning light traffic, so it took half an hour to make the trip home and back to the market again, during which my wife minded the half of the stock that we’d taken on the first trip. Overall it worked pretty well, and saved me hiring a bigger car for the day.

I was hopeful that there’d be plenty of customers and I’d make decent sales. Unfortunately the people were only middling in number. Several came through and stopped to look at my photos and have a chat, but not many bought anything. Overall though, I enjoyed this market a lot better than last week’s and Kirribilli. The vibe is a lot more relaxed, and a much higher fraction of the people stop to have a look at things. At Kirribilli, there’s a lot of foot traffic with people just walking through the market to get from somewhere to somewhere else, and the majority of them don’t stop to even look at anything, which is a bit disheartening. But at Lindfield, it’s a smaller market in a slightly out-of-the-way area, so people coming here are coming for the market. So they walk slower, linger longer, and stop to chat to the stallholders.

So it was a lot nicer than last week. But… again I didn’t make enough sales to cover the cost of the stall rental. I’m going to give it another try next month, but if this gig doesn’t start turning a profit I’m going to have to have a think about it.

New content today:

Market prep again

Tomorrow I have another market day, this time back at Lindfield, which is the smaller suburban market – but oddly the one where I’ve made better sales than than the bigger Kirribilli Market. So I’m hoping for a good day.

I spent much of today writing and making Darths & Droids comics. After lunchtime I’d had enough, and resorted to housecleaning to break the screen time.

Not much else to report.

New content today:

Instant noodles

Today was mostly a chore day. I did the weekly grocery shopping. Most weeks recently I’ve been getting falafels and flatbread from the supermarket to make falafel wraps for lunch, and I put tahini, sliced tomato, and chilli sauce on them. But today I decided I’d try something different for the next week, and make falafel salads, with lettuce and cucumber and other fresh stuff instead of the flatbread. And also in the fruit & veg section I saw pomegranates and thought why not? So maybe I’ll throw some of that in too.

And I found some fresh mozzarella, packaged in whey. I got some to try making a Margherita pizza in a few days.

A bit later I went to a new Asian supermarket that opened nearby recently. It’s really good! It’s mostly Japanese products, but there was also stuff a mix of other things. I found the Singaporean brand of instant noodles that make an absolutely amazing laksa. I’d previously got these from my regular supermarket, but they’ve stopped stocking it. Not only did they have the laksa version, they had a couple of other flavours I hadn’t seen before!

Black pepper crab and chilli crab! And they’re labelled “New! Must try!” Wow, I had to try these, so I got one of each.

At home I did a spring clean of the bathroom, emptying out the cabinets and going through all the items, cleaning off dust, throwing out old stuff, cleaning the cabinet interiors, and putting useful stuff back in neatly. I discovered that the toothpaste we get stands upright on the big flat lid! We’ve always stored toothpaste tubes lying on their side, but I tried this to save space, and it works beautifully! Now I’m wondering if everyone else has been doing this for years and I’ve just never thought of it…

New content today:

Special fancy lunch day

The special occasion mentioned yesterday is that today is my wife’s birthday. She took the day off work and we had lunch at a fancy restaurant booked. The restaurant was in Woolloomooloo, which is a walkable distance from the centre of the city, but we needed to get over there first. Since Scully can’t go on trains, we went down to the nearest ferry wharf (since dogs are allowed on ferries).

The ferry took us across the harbour towards the city.

The ferry terminal is in Circular Quay, between the Bridge and the Opera House (around to the right behind the Bridge in this next photo).

From the ferry terminal we walked past the State Library of New South Wales.

Into The Domain, a large park. Scully ran around on the grass a bit.

We walked past the Art Gallery of New South Wales and across into Woolloomooloo. This was the view form our restaurant table:

The food was amazing. This is my appetiser, pepper crusted hiramasa kingfish with almonds, capers, cavalo nero, and parmesan (I think) tuile.

And my main dish, black and white cappellacci pasta filled with spanner crab and mascarpone, in a sweet corn sauce.

This restaurant is the sort of place where people arrive in large boats, moor on the wharf adjacent, and hop out to have lunch – which is exactly what we saw one group do. It’s a mix of people with a lot of money, and people like us who come here maybe once every 3 or 4 years for a special occasion. Here’s Scully mixing with the rich and influential:

They gave us a surprise complimentary dessert for my wife’s birthday – a chocolate mousse filled with stewed apple. And I ordered the regular chocolate mousse from the menu:

Seriously, look at that. It comes with olive oil ice cream, chocolate nut cookie crumble, and that super thin crispy tuile on top. It was absolutely delicious too (as was all the food).

After this extravagant lunch, we walked back to the ferry terminal and caught the ferry home. Scully was worn out from the excitement of the day!

It was a really pleasant way to spend a day. And we’re so full of good food that we’ve just had a light snack for dinner.

New content today:

Comics & Pizza

Today was knuckling down to the business of assembling Irregular Webcomic! strips out of all the photos I took yesterday. I had 24 strips to make, and powered through them starting as soon as my wife left for work in the morning, and finishing a bit after lunch. That’s a really fast pace, as I was pushing myself to complete the task before having to go pick up Scully for the afternoon.

As it turned out, Scully stayed at work for longer because not one, but two of my wife’s workmates also brought their dogs in today, so there were three of them at the office!

That’s Scully, Ted, and Leo, from left to right. They played hard in the office all day, and Scully was dead tired by the time I got her home. Which is good!

For dinner tonight I made pizza. This time I tried about 1/4 wholemeal flour in the dough, as requested by my wife. It made the dough tougher to knead, but the final result turned out pretty well.

Tomorrow… is a special day and I have some very cool stuff planned. Which you’ll hear about tomorrow.

New content today:

IWC photography day

This morning was dedicated to shooting photos for the new batch of Irregular Webcomic! strips that I finished writing yesterday. Or rather, “finished” writing, as today while looking at the scripts to figure out how to set up the photos for each panel, I revised several of the scripts.

Photos done, I picked up Scully from my wife’s work at lunchtime, and brought her home via a park where she did some ball chasing. At home I sorted through a pile of documents and receipts, scanning various things that needed to be kept and then tossing everything out. I also baked some sourdough bread, which I’d started yesterday. And then took Scully to the regular 4pm dog park for some more exercise.

That feels like not much when I describe it, but it was a pretty busy day.

New content today:

Writing and fish and chips

After yesterday’s busy and long day, I felt a bit worn out today. I worked on Irregular Webcomic! scripts, hoping to complete the batch in time for photographing tomorrow morning. I made it just after lunch, then took a break to build a new Lego set I’ve been working on for a bit.

I picked up Scully from my wife’s work, and my wife suggested we go out for some fish & chips for dinner. The local place is a short walk away and pretty good, so this is a nice easy dinner. We sat outside in the evening twilight at a table and benches on the side of the road, watching the stars come out.

New content today:

Cold market day

Today was the Kirribilli Arts & Crafts Market, and I had my stall there selling my photography prints and greeting cards. My wife had a small part of the stall for her dog bandanas. I went in with optimistic thoughts about the number of customers.

The weather was fine and sunny, but windy. And it was cold – winter cold. The maximum temperature in Sydney was only 19.7°C. I had a jacket on, but after standing at the stall in the morning for a while and not walking around, I was shivering from the cold. My wife had to go buy me a hot chocolate to try to warm up.

There were a lot more customers going through the market than any of the previous days I’ve been at this one. However, the demographic in this area is younger than at Lindfield, the other market that I go to. And it seems that the strongest buyers of my products are older women buying greeting cards, and middle-aged parents with children around the pre-teen years, who buy matted prints for the kids. There were a few of this demographic today, but mostly it was young couples, singles, and groups of teenagers – very very few of whom are particularly interested in greeting cards or fine art photography prints.

The upshot is I didn’t make enough sales to cover the cost of the stall rental, even with a busy market. I’m going to have to rethink whether Kirribilli is a good market for me to be attending. I’m a lot more optimistic about Lindfield Market next week, which is a suburban area with a lot of empty nesters and families with older children.

It was a long and tiring day still. We got up at 05:30, to head to the market by 06:00, and we only got home with all of our stuff after 4:30 pm (the market having closed at 3 pm).

Then it was a simple dinner and relaxing before an early night, because my wife has to get up before 6 again tomorrow for a week of work in the office.

New content today: