April 2022 – Page 3 – dangermouse.net

More ethics than ever before

I had a special request from a parent for an introductory 1-on-1 ethics class for her daughter today before putting her into a group class, so I scheduled a new class, meaning I had 4 classes today. Previously I’ve never had more than 3 on one day. So it was a bit exhausting, and ate up much of the day, as they were scattered around with not much of a gap between any of them in which to do other things.

I did manage time at lunch to go for a walk with my wife and Scully, down to the waterside park and back. It looked fine when we set out, but we got a heavy shower while out. it was pretty heavy rain, and strong wind so it came in at a steep angle, but it didn’t last too long, and was fine again with the sun coming out by the time we got back.

I cooked up another batch of bunya nuts and made pesto, which I’m saving for dinner with pasta on the weekend, but I used part of it as a sauce on burgers for tonight’s dinner. They were beetroot and black bean burger patties from the supermarket.

Tonight is virtual board games night. We’re currently in the middle of a game of El Grande. I’m winning, but I’m not sure it’ll last.

Edit: And I won the game of El Grande! Wow, I hardly ever win in games against my friends…

New content today:

Day 2 of rain bomb n+1

We’ve now had almost 150 mm of rain in the past 40 hours. Most of it was overnight, but it slowly eased off until late afternoon. bY the time I left for my university lecture tonight it had stopped – at least here. There is still heavy rain hitting the northern suburbs of Sydney, but it’s localised to that area. We had some minor flooding in the basement garage, but nothing serious. Around Sydney there was much worse in places, with many roads cut, and evacuation orders issued in a handful of low-lying suburbs near rivers.

Outside Sydney, some rural areas are expecting rivers to rise again and produce flooding even worse than what they experienced a couple of weeks ago. The good news is this current weather system is now weakening, so the heaviest rainfall is probably over.

In interesting statistics, we’ve now had more rain in 2022 than we had in every year from 2008 to 2021. We’re close to passing 2007’s rainfall total too, and if when we get there, then 2022 will be the wettest year since 1998.

New content today:

Day 1 of rain bomb n+1

The rain has hit again. The forecast for today was up to 20 mm. So far we’ve had over 50 mm, and it’s only 9pm. Tomorrow is forecast for 100 mm, and then Friday another 30 mm. And Sydney is getting off lightly compared to some of the places that have been flooding recently – some of those areas are forecast to get over 300 mm.

This morning I had my last face-to-face ethics class at the school for this school term. It’s two weeks holiday over Easter for the kids (and me!), and then we return for term 2. It was raining heavily and the school is having construction work done to build a new hall after the old one burnt down a couple of years ago, so there are makeshift paths and mud and construction workers all over the place.

Tonight I’m baking some sourdough brownies. I thought I’d try to feed the sourdough starter a little more often, which means I’m trying to do things with it in between baking loaves of bread. I wondered if brownies would work, and of course there are dozens of recipes on the net, so we’ll see how it goes.

New content today:

New ethics topic: Emotions

It’s Tuesday, which means the start of a new topic for the week of online ethics classes. This week we’re discussing emotions. I wrote the lesson this afternoon, and this evening I taught the first three classes. It seems this one is more of a critical thinking exercise than an ethical one, as there was barely any disagreement or alternative opinions among the students to most of the questions. Instead of exploring diverse opinions, we’re instead teasing out an understanding of various emotions and why we feel them, using critical thinking skills. Which is part of the class scope and description, so that’s all good.

I got up early this morning and went for my run first thing. This was after doing yesterday’s run in the evening after dark. It was the first time I’d done a run at night time, and it was a little disconcerting going at pace along streets and footpaths, with dark shadows everywhere and not having a clear view of the footing. So yesterday’s run was slow compared to times I’ve been doing recently. (Although still good compared to what I was doing a couple of months ago!)

I forgot to mention it here, but on Saturday Strava informed me that during that day’s 2.5k run I clocked my fastest 1k split ever. I ran the first kilometre in 3:53, which Strava told me was my fastest 1k ever. (At least, since I’ve been using Strava – although given I’ve never really been much for running, it may well be the fastest 1k I’ve ever run in my life.) I was pretty pleased with that, since I’ve been aiming at breaking 4 minutes for 1k for a while.

At lunch today I took Scully for a walk up to the shops and got some sushi rolls for lunch. I chose to walk a little further to another small park to eat, rather than the small square in the middle of the shops. The latter is convenient and a nice place to sit and watch people go by, but the grass there has all died, and it’s also haunted by posses of magpies who have become increasingly aggressive over the past few years. They will literally steal food from your hands while you’re trying to eat. This other park we went to is also very small, but nicely grassy, and blissfully empty of magpies, because it’s more out of the way and less trafficked. So I enjoyed my sushi rolls in peace, and then we walked home in the lovely warm sunshine.

This sunny weather won’t last. It’s supposed to close in tomorrow, and Thursday is going to be extremely wet, with 100 mm of rain and flash flood warnings. It remains to be seen how possible it will be to travel into the university for my lecture class on that night…

New content today:

Warm and sunny!

The sun came out today! It was warm! It ain’t going to last though… the forecast for Thursday has been raised to up to 100 mm of rain, with 25 on Wednesday and 30 on Friday. But tomorrow should be hopefully warm and dry.

I worked today on another weekly batch of Irregular Webcomic! strips. And… gosh, I’m not sure what else I did. I made some sourdough bread, and made cauliflower rice with fried chilli eggs for dinner.

Sometimes I just don’t know how a whole day flies by so quickly.

Last night I started watching The Exorcist. Despite being a classic, I’ve never seen it before. I’m half way through and might try to finish it tonight. It’s definitely a product of the 1970s, and it’s got a slow burn beginning that takes maybe half an hour just setting up the characters before anything really happens. But it’s getting interesting now and I’m curious to see how it ends.

New content today:

Housecleaning, but not my own

Today I had an unusual chore to do. My mother-in-law’s place needs freshening up and repainting to remove a mould problem caused by all the recent rain and humidity. So we went over today to help her pack fragile things like glassware and crockery out of the furniture so that the painters could move the furniture without breaking anything. We also took down all the paintings and pictures from the walls, and the curtains, and we helped her remove a whole bunch of books for donating to clear out some space.

This evening I had my two usual ethics classes, plus a science class for the girl who is doing those occasionally with me. Today we built on what we did about DNA and heredity last time, and moved on to evolution. As part of this I talked about the fossil record and the dating of fossils, which built on the knowledge she learnt back when we were talking about atoms and radioactivity – she already knows how we determine the ages of rocks and fossils.

So I spent most of the day when we weren’t out preparing that lesson.

Oh, and the weather was warm and sunny! No rain!! Although the Bureau of Meteorology has issued a warning that more rain is developing, and their models indicate we could get another 100-200 mm of rain starting from Wednesday, with some of the most flood-affected areas further north getting another 300-400 mm. Everyone you talk to here in Sydney is sick to death of this endless rain.

New content today:

Double update: Friday/Saturday

Friday I worked on my secret project a bit, and then had ethics classes in the early evening, before virtual games night with my friends, We played Perudo, 7 Wonders, 6 Nimmt, Scattergories, Boomerang Australia. I was very surprised when I won the first game of 7 Wonders, which is a game I don’t often win. Moreso because I thought I was doing quite poorly, until the final points count at the end where it turned out that I’d won.

Today we all slept in a bit in the morning. For once in a long time we didn’t have anything urgent to do in the morning. The sleep in was really nice.

I did some writing and comic making for Darths & Droids today. And this evening we dropped Scully with the neighbours while I took my wife out for a special dinner at a nice restaurant. Check it out:

Barbecue pork, smoked trout, capers, garlic flowers:

Macadamia ravioli, cherry tomatoes, madeira, green olives:

Jerusalem artichoke, black barley, hazelnuts, sea lettuce:

John dory, green tomatoes, currants, verjuice:

Valrhona chocolate, Earl Grey mousse, buckwheat, wattle seed:

New content yesterday:

New content today: