friends – dangermouse.net

A nice day for a lunch out

This morning I finished off my lesson plan for this week’s new critical thinking/ethics topic of “Sayings”. I found some interesting medieval and foreign sayings that modern English speakers aren’t familiar with, to give to the kids to let them try to puzzle them out.

For lunch I drove with Scully over to Two Chaps at Marrickville, where I met my old friend Lisa. We grabbed a table out on the footpath, under a large umbrella to keep the sun off, and had a nice meal. I had the “corned beet” Reuben sandwich, which I’ve had before and really enjoyed. We had a big catch up conversation. She’s started working a part time job—for the first time since raising her kids—doing aged care home visits. She used to be a nurse, so has relevant experience.

After lunch I drove back home, made a comic for tonight’s update, and did the first class with the Sayings topic. Only one student, who was returning after a long break, but it was a lot of fun.

For dinner I made mushroom risotto. I’m just now trying to write some new Darths & Droids material. I need to get a new comic made tomorrow, but I’ll also be busy revising the image processing lecture material to make sure I’m ready to deliver the lecture on Thursday.

The lecture is on image segmentation and image analysis, covering topics such as thresholding, edge detection, pixel morphology operations (erosion, dilation, skeletonisation, etc), geometric property measurement, and convolution and cross-correlation. Should be a fun lecture! (This is serious, not sarcastic, in case that wasn’t obvious. 😀)

New content today:

Heading south for lunch out

Today I caught up with my old schoolfriend Lisa again. We last met for lunch back in February, near my place. It was a hot day, and we said we should get together again in a few months when it’s cooler. Well, unfortunately the 5 nice days in April passed too quickly and now it’s chilly! But she arranged lunch at Blackfish Cafe in Como, in Sydney’s southern suburbs. This was near her place (in fact she walked there), and her husband wanted to meet me so he came along as well and the three of us had a very nice lunch.

Four of us… Scully was there too!

She’s got her eyes on my fried flathead & chips. She did get a small piece of fish once I’d finished.

Anyway, I’ve seen Lisa’s husband many times in her Instagram feed, but I was surprised when he spoke with an English/Welsh accent. They’d met over in London while Lisa was spending a few years living over there. We all had a good chat over a nice lunch, but it really was a bit too chilly when the wind blew across the river. Otherwise it was a nice day, sunny with scattered clouds, and a nice setting on the water for lunch.

The drive there took close to an hour. On the way home I stopped in at Bunnings to buy a new kitchen mixer tap to replace our dodgy one, and also a light bulb to replace a burnt out one in the bathroom. I suspect there might be something wrong with the light fitting in there, as it’s burnt through two LED bulbs in the past year or so. I got a nice mixer tap, and I’ll have a look to see if I can possibly replace the old one myself without having to pay a plumber to do it. Assuming I have the right tools, I suspect I probably can.

At home I made sourdough, and pizza for dinner, and worked on some comics. And going to relax a bit tonight!

New content today:

Lunch with Lisa again

Today I spent the morning writing my class plan for the next week of ethics, on the topic of “Sleep”.

A bit after 11, I walked with Scully down to North Sydney to meet my old school-friend Lisa, who I’d reconnected with back in November. I met her at the station exit and we walked a few blocks up the hill to Soho on Miller Cafe. I chose this place because it has a good looking menu and it’s not far from my wife’s work. She tried a pasta dish while I had the chicken schnitzel with mushroom sauce, which was pretty good.

We chatted for a bit and then my wife joined us for a bit during her lunch break. It’s the first time the two of them have met and they chatted and swapped some stories. My wife took Scully back to her office for a little while I walked Lisa back to the station to catch her train home. Then I came back and picked up Scully and walked home with her.

When we got home, it was clear that our new neighbours across the hall, who we met yesterday when they locked themselves out, were having their furniture delivered today. This caused Scully to bark quite a bit with the noise, but it was good that they’ll finally have a sofa to sit on!

I made pizza for dinner tonight. I opened a new can of yeast powder, and the dough rose a lot more than the dough I’ve been making the past few months – probably because the old yeast was beginning to lose its potency.

New content today:

Catching up with an old friend

Today I had a catch up over lunch with an old friend from school named Lisa. I’ve known her since Year 6, so 11 years old. We lost contact after high school but refound each other at a school reunion a few years ago. We’ve kept up on Facebook since, but I haven’t seen her again since then, until today. She travelled to near my place on the train and we met at a local cafe. We had a good long chat, filling each other in on years of back-story that we’d missed. I took Scully too and the two of them got along nicely.

My wife went back to work after our trip today, but I’m still taking it a bit easy a few more days. I loaded all my photos from the trip onto the desktop computer – from my phone and from my dSLR. 1226 photos!

And I worked on some Darths & Droids writing and comics. That’s about it. Oh, I went for another 2.5k run this evening, and went faster than yesterday, but still outside 13 minutes. I need to get back below 12:30!

Oh! And I got some awful news! My friends’ and my favourite Thai restaurant near our old workplace, Go Hun, has been replaced by some new one that is part of a corporate chain of Thai restaurants. We don’t know if the staff are the same, but the menu has changed. We’re all in mourning, and I feel like we should have some sort of Thai food wake.

New content today:

Catching up with an old friend

Today I’d arranged a lunch with an old friend from university, named Gina, who I hadn’t seen in…. over 25 years. She’s moved down to Melbourne, but is up in Sydney visiting her parents for Christmas. Last time we tried to meet up we were foiled by me and my wife travelling to Hobart for Christmas.

She’s staying with her parents, who live way on the other end of Sydney, so I drove most of the way there, and she came partway to meet me somewhere in the middle. The place she chose for lunch was a cafe at a marina on the Georges River, which was also next to a tidal baths swimming area.

I also took Scully with me, so my friend could meet her. It was a warm day, but thankfully we had a shady table with a view of the river and the swimmers. We caught up over lunch of seafood, chips, and salad. When you haven’t seen someone for that long, there’s a lot of things you have to tell one another!

After lunch I drove back home with Scully. And we sat and waited for my wife to come home. (I did some comics work, and skimmed through some cool new Star Trek RPG sourcebooks that I got from a Humble Bundle deal.) My wife had some unfun news though – her work has cancelled their Christmas party which was to be held tomorrow, due to COVID concerns. They were going to finish work before lunch and spend the afternoon at the party venue, but now she has to work a regular day tomorrow. 😕

New content today: