December 2024 – dangermouse.net

Some long overdue photography processing

First thing this morning I had my dental hygiene appointment. As I mentioned a while back, my dentist retired just a few days ago, so I didn’t get to see him again. The new dentist is a young guy and seems very nice. During the check-up he looked at a couple of old fillings and said they were showing wear and erosion and should be replaced. So I’m booked in for that next Wednesday.

I expected to see the regular hygienist, but they had bad news – she had a family emergency and had taken extended leave. The replacement hygienist said she should be back in a few weeks. But when I went out to reception to pay for today’s visit the receptionist said that the old hygienist might not be returning at all, and if so the temporary replacement would be staying on. The old hygienist was really good, but the temp who did my teeth today was also very good, so it’s a toss-up in terms of preference, but of course I hope the family emergency isn’t something that will drag on.

I hadn’t had time for breakfast before going to the dentist, so I decided to walk home via Moon Phase and try that last regular pastry on the menu that I haven’t tried yet (second last item described here). The last item was a kouign-amann, a type of pastry I’d never heard of before, and had no idea how to pronounce. I kind of assumed it was a Korean name, as the bakery is run by Koreans, but turns out it’s Breton. Anyway, it was basically a cylinder of delicious laminated dough, glazed all over with a super thin layer of caramelised sugar. Like all their products, really good.

I came home and worked on this week’s ethics class lesson plan, on the topic of Alien Invasion. This should be a fun one, as it’s speculative and about a popular fictional theme. The first class was tonight and it was pretty good.

In the afternoon I sorted and counted some more Magic: the Gathering cards, doing an inventory of another set in preparation to selling them.

And I spent some time going back to old photos I took on my trip to Japan in June last year and starting to process them and upload them to Flickr. I have hundreds of dSLR photos which I haven’t touched since the trip, plus hundreds of iPhone photos, and I want to go through them and make an album of the best shots before I go to Japan again in February! I did photos of Okayama Castle today.

I have a bit of work to do to go through the whole trip. And then I have my trip to Italy and Finland from November 2023 to do as well!

New content today:

Like Garfield, Mondays are the toughest days of the week

A total of six ethics classes eat up a lot of the day. I walked Scully at lunch time, but not too far as it was a hot day. The roads and footpaths get so hot in the sun that I only really let Scully walk on shaded areas. If they’re in full sun, I reach down to feel the paving and it was definitely too hot today to let her walk on without potentially burning her feet, so I had to carry her part of the way.

In the early evening I made pizza for dinner. And then went for a walk as the sun was going down with my wife and Scully. It was cooler, but still on the warm side and humid. But now at least the paths had cooled down so Scully could have a solid walk.

I think the nearby shops that we walk past should have a gelato shop! But interestingly the fish & chip shop is now open on Mondays. It never used to open on Mondays. My wife thinks that it must have new owners who have decided to extend the opening hours.

New content today:

More storms and steamy weather

It’s beginning to feel like a tropical rainforest here. It was warm and sticky again when I went for my 5k run this morning, at 7:30 which was earlier than yesterday, but it was warmer and another difficult effort.

Just before 3pm we had a huge storm, with a lot of loud thunder, which dumped 34 mm of rain on Sydney in less than half an hour. Then it stopped and warmed up again, driving the humidity sky high again. it’s really pretty unpleasant. The weather bureau did warn us this summer would be wetter than usual. I’d just love a hot day with low humidity for a change.

I did another Darths & Droids comic this morning, and did a bunch of housecleaning stuff. Cleaned the bathroom, shower cubicle, and vacuumed the floors. Which was hard, sweaty work in this weather.

Not much else to say today. I was a bit tired because it was warm during the night and Scully decided to snuggle up right against my back during the night for some reason, making me even warmer and disrupting my sleep a bit.

New content today: