Friday morning I did the first regular grocery shop since we got home from Japan. It was a big order. When I picked it up from the supermarket, the friendly woman there who always says hello told me that it was her last day working there. She’s moving up the coast for semi-retirement, and working reduced hours at the local supermarket branch up there. I don’t think I ever knew her name, but I wish her well.
After my ethics classes, it was gaming night. I took Scully with me to a friend’s place – my wife had a dinner out with her friends. We played a couple of games of 7 Wonders with the Cities expansion – the first time I’ve ever played the game with any expansion set. It was pretty fun, and I managed to win the first game, though did poorly in the second one. Then we played Azul: Queen’s Garden. I’d brought this game from home, but hadn’t played it in a while and had to refresh myself on the rules. Unfortunately I botched one rule and didn’t discover it until the second round, but from then on we played correctly. I ended up coming a poor third of four players.
This morning I went for a 5k run for the first time since leaving for Japan. I didn’t push too hard, but was pleased that my time wasn’t unusually bad.
After lunch my wife and I walked down to a lighting showroom that is not too far away. I’d been thinking about replacing our old boring light fittings with something a little more stylish, and possibly getting one with an extra bulb for increased brightness in the living room area. Since we moved from incandescents to smart LED bulbs, they’re not quite as bright and I miss the brightness when doing things that require concentration, such as playing games (board or D&D) on the dining table.
Anyway, we looked at hundreds of light fittings that were in display and tried to find the intersection of our preferences. There were some styles that I liked that she didn’t like, and vice versa, but we eventually narrowed things down to some that we were both happy with. The lights need to come from their warehouses, and the guy said that one major warehouse was in Brisbane, which is being affected by Tropical Cyclone Alfred, so it might be some time until we get all the lights. But we’re not in a rush, and they should be available in a couple of weeks or so.
That’s the other big news here in Australia. Cyclone Alfred hit Brisbane overnight and fortinately it lost strength just before making landfall, so wasn’t as intense as initially expected. But it’s moving very slowly and will dump a lot of rain on the area over the next two days. There’s a lot of flooding and fallen trees and power lines, which will take weeks to repair. One man is missing, suspected dead, after being washed away by floodwater.
The tail end of the cyclone will hit Sydney over the next couple of days too, as the tropical low moves south. We’re expected to get heavy rain, mostly on Monday and Tuesday, but no damaging winds thankfully.
My sympathy to the people of Brisbane. As a power company employee, I participated in restoring power after Sandy hit here on Long Island (New York). It’s an enormous job.