Yesterday was board games night online, so I didn’t write up my blog post. The day was pretty ordinary, starting with the usual morning pick-up of the groceries that I’d ordered online. I always grab fruit and vegetables manually before collecting the reminder of the pick-up order. My wife requested a loaf of bread to got into the freezer to replace our backup loaf that gets used when we run out of home made sourdough. I grabbed a loaf and took it to the checkout with the fruit and veg, but not wanting to squash it on the bottom of the shopping bag I set it aside and scanned all the fruit and veg first. And then forgot about the bread! I only realised today that the bread wasn’t here, and remembered that I must have left it at the self-serve checkout in the supermarket. Oh well.
We had an epic online board games night. Because the Olympic Games are currently on in Paris, we had a medal tally board, listing everyone who came first, second, or third in all of the games, and we played a series of short games to get in as many “events” as possible. We also each represented a country, chosen by rolling randomly on a table and following some amusing directions. For example, one of the table entries was “find the top-leftmost item in your fridge, and what country it is most associated with”. If I’d rolled this, the item was cheddar cheese, and my country would have been Great Britain. As it happened, I rolled “What Olympic sport have you played the most? What country has won the most medals in that sport?” it wasn’t entirely clear, but I chose tennis, and it turns out that Great Britain has won the most medals in that, so that was indeed my country for the night. Others got France, Costa Rica, Georgia, Sweden, and Australia. We played a total of eight different games, and won one gold, one silver, and two bronze medals, coming 4th in the tally out of 6 countries.
Today I found an article in the news that began:
The word on the street seems unanimous — it feels like one of the coldest winters in living memory.
It’s true… I’ve been commenting about how cold it’s been this winter, and everyone I know has been saying the same thing. We’re all freezing here in Sydney and saying how unusually cold it is.
Only this news article points out that Australia has experienced a June and July 0.7°C above the long-term average baseline. And Sydney in particular has recorded a June/July 0.9°C above average. However, this is the second coldest winter in the last ten years. The problem is the baseline has shifted and we’ve become used to warm winters. Last year, for example, we had a winter 1.7°C above average. Climate change, huh.
Today my wife and I went to her mother’s place to pick her up and take her to the nursing home where her mother (my wife’s grandmother) has moved into. She’s 101 years old and only moved out of her own home a couple of months ago, after having a fall. We didn’t visit since it required COVID tests and my mother-in-law only wanted to stay an hour or so. So in the meantime we drove a short distance to a new bakery we’d found, called Flour Store, where we had some lunch. They had truly amazing sausage rolls, with pork, fennel, and apple. And we got a loaf of sourdough fruit loaf to bring home.
And tonight I learnt something fascinating about an old Dungeons & Dragons monster: the thoul. I knew that the thoul is a classic monster from the 1981 (Tom Moldvay) Basic Dungeons & Dragons rules, described as:
A thoul is a magical combination of a ghoul, a hobgoblin, and a troll. Except when very close, thouls look exactly like hobgoblins, and they are sometimes found as part of the bodyguard of a hobgoblin king. The touch of a thoul will paralyze (in the same way as that of a ghoul). If it is damaged, a thoul will regenerate 1 hit point per round as long as it is alive. [like a troll]
But today I learnt that the thoul began life as a typo in a table of monsters in the Original 1974 D&D rules. It was intended to be a Toad, as listed in the first printing, but was listed on the line before “Ghoul” and somehow in a later printing became “Thoul”. In subsequent printings the publishers at TSR decided, instead of correcting the typo, to double down on the typo and invent a creature to fit the name. This is documented on this blog. I always wondered about this wacky monster that made no sense!
New content yesterday:
- Irregular Webcomic! #5250
- Square Root of Minus Garfield #5554
- Lightning Made of Owls #936
- Comments on a Postcard #5655
New content today: