Yesterday while walking Scully up to the main shops nearby, I took this photo:
This row of buildings has been somewhat derelict for several years, some businesses shutting down and nothing new opening, although there were still some hangers-on up until very recently. One of them, the green one, was a place called “Stuffed Beaver”, which purported to be a Canadian restaurant. I’ve never ever seen any other Canadian restaurant in my life (except in Canada I guess) and have no idea what would distinguish it as such, other than perhaps having poutine on the menu. But now they’re all empty and demolition has begun with the removal of the metal awnings that hung over each shop front. You can also see a guy surveying the area. So I expect that demolition will begin pretty soon, followed by redevelopment into new businesses and almost certainly a tower of apartments above.
Today I did some more comics stuff in the morning. I’m needing to build up a buffer to cover my trip to Tokyo in a week and a half, so I’m concentrating on that in my spare time.
At lunch I walked up to y wife’s work to pick up Scully and bring her home. I decided to take a roundabout route home, via a cafe where we stopped for lunch. I had a chicken burger, which was pretty good. It came with hot chips and they were sprinkled with super fancy sea salt crystals, which were large pyramid shapes. But the crystals were so large that they all fell off the chips and the salt ended up on the plate and there was none on the chips. I had to manually pick up the salt crystals and delicately place them on the chips before putting them in my mouth to get any salt at all. Despite this, the meal was good – the chips were nicely crispy with a fluffy centre.
On the walk home from there, I passed another piece of construction.
This is a bushwalk track that I take up from the harbour shore, through a forested reserve area to the road to walk home. The sandstone steps on the left are brand new, still under construction. Previously the path up the hill involved an awkward large step up that tree root on the right, where you can see the old wooden steps above and below. It was tricky, and also very high for Scully to jump – one time she didn’t land properly and fell off the tree root. So the new steps will be much appreciated once they’re finished.
Tonight I made pumpkin quiche for dinner, and then had three more classes on the Fantasy logic topic. I’m really enjoying this one, and it’s getting the kids to apply their critical thinking to some interesting new hypothetical situations. Although some of the kids are having some difficulty understanding the distinction between coming up with reasons why magic can’t do X from the point of view of the author, versus in-story reasons.
e.g. “What are some reasons within the story for why heroes go on a difficult quest instead of just using magic?” And a kid answers, “Because if they used magic it’d make the story boring.” I need to explain very carefully that “Yes, that’s the reason the writer writes the story that way, but what could be a reason that the writer comes up with that the hero would tell someone else in the story why they can’t just use magic?” The wording gets a bit convoluted when trying to clarify this for a kid who is having difficulty with the distinction. But I did get there in the end!
New content today:
The kid’s answer was mine as well!