scully – Page 2 – dangermouse.net

Scully’s birthday lunch

Today is Scully’s 6th birthday! My wife took the day off work, and we had booked a lunch in a fancy restaurant in the Hunter Valley wine region, north of Sydney. We left home at 9am to drive up there and arrived just after 11 o’clock. This gave us some time to stop off in the Hunter Valley Gardens to look around some of the shops there. I tried some liqueurs and bought a few bottles: butterscotch liqueur, chocolate/hazelnut vodka, and passionfruit vodka.

Then we drove over to our lunch venue in one of the vineyards. Here’s Scully in the vineyard:

We went to Leogate Estate winery and their restaurant, The Gates. Being a Tuesday, it wasn’t very busy and we had the only occupied table outside on the very shady veranda area. There were a few other diners inside, but we were enjoying the warm day and the solitude being outside, with a view of the vineyard and the nearby hills:

The lunch was excellent. My appetiser was seared scallops with textures of spring peas:

Followed by confit duck with pancetta, bok choy, and sticky soy glaze:

And the dessert was something special. Caramel bombe Alaska:

Both of the waitresses recommended this, and they were not wrong. It was amazing and absolutely delicious. Crispy meringue crust, soft meringue inside, encasing chocolate and vanilla ice cream, sitting on top of what was like a slice of sticky date pudding, and surrounded by delicious caramel sauce, all sprinkled with bits of raspberries. It was so good. After we’d finished, one of the waitresses asked how I’d liked it, and said that some people come to this restaurant just for that dessert. It was a really good lunch. And Scully enjoyed a tiny piece of the duck that I gave her for her birthday.

After eating, we went into the wine tasting and sales room to buy some bottles of the wines that we’d had during the lunch. Then we stopped at another winery nearby to get some of the sparkling wines that my wife likes (and I like them too, but they’re her favourites).

We left the Valley via a slower back road to head home, rather than take the freeway all the way back. It’s slower, but more scenic and enjoyable. We arrived home about 5:30pm. The total distance driven just to have lunch today was about 340 kilometres.

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Felting

My wife did the most interesting thing today. I stayed a home and made some comics, while she went to an all-day course for beginners in felting – making things out of wool felt. She came home with a simple sheet which could be used as a table placemat, and also a very cool felt bowl. The bowl is shaped like a rough sphere about the size of a rockmelon, with an opening large enough to put a hand in. She said I could use it for putting things in during Dungeons & Dragons games. Like lollies or maybe game tokens. Or slips of paper with rumours on them – yeah, that’s a cool idea.

Scully was again off her food today and wanting to go outside several times to eat grass. This is the third time in three weeks. I was wondering if it might be the peanut butter we’ve been giving to her as a treat on Fridays – but she’s always had that and has never been sick from it before. My wife thinks it might be psychosomatic, caused by her going away to do these courses on Sundays and not being at home. Which might possibly have some truth to it, because Scully wolfed down her neglected breakfast once my wife arrived back home.

The weather continues to be nice, not too hot, and pleasantly cool in the evening and mornings. I went for another 5k run this morning, but deliberately took it easy after my exertion and fast time yesterday.

For dinner I made vegetable fajitas. It’s tough predicting exactly how much vegetables to chop and cook. Sometimes we end up with not quite enough and sometimes there’s cooked vegetables left over after we’ve finished off all the tortillas. Today we had a generous serving. I used onions, garlic, carrot, broccoli, cauliflower, and mushrooms. Sometimes I use zucchini in place of one of the other vegetables. And I just make a simple “Mexican” spice mix using individual herbs and spices: dried oregano, sweet paprika, chilli, cumin, cloves, and cinnamon. And a bit of lemon juice at the end. I found this mix somewhere online ages ago and it works pretty well. Just fry it all up and serve in a bowl with implements for people to fill their own tortillas.

Last night I started watching Oppenheimer on Netflix. I got 2 hours into it, but had to go to sleep, so I have the final hour to watch tonight. I’m enjoying it, but it takes a lot of concentration to follow the frequent flashback/forward time jumps as the story unfolds. The really cool thing is that being a physicist I recognise the names of all the scientist characters.

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Thinking about cooking

Tonight I had the first three classes of the new ethics/critical thinking topic on the topic of “Cooking”. As an icebreaker I asked the kids if they did any cooking, were learning to cook, or whatever. Some of the kids said they never cook – their parents just cook for them. Some said they were learning and could cook a few things and weren’t very good yet.

And then there was one kid who said, “Yes, I’m good at it. I cook chicken and pasta, and crème brûlée, and croissants.” 😯

Earlier in the afternoon I had today’s university lecture, today on summary statistics for data. This is a long lecture and tutorial exercises, which occupied nearly the full 3-hour timeslot, so I got home a bit later than usual. Usually the classes only go about 2 hours. I had some sushi rolls for lunch, from a new place that I haven’t tried before. They were pretty good, and they have an interesting variety of fillings that is different to other places I go. One of them was a soft-shelled crab roll!

I picked up Scully from my wife’s work on the way home. Scully didn’t have breakfast again this morning, but she ate it when she got home, and then had a dinner as well. So hopefully her stomach is settled back down again.

Despite all the focus on food today, I didn’t have time to cook a proper dinner before my evening classes, so my wife and I just made ourselves eggs on toast at different times.

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Scully off her food

We’ve been keeping an eye on Scully the past day or so, as she’s been off her food. She didn’t eat anything yesterday, and took some time today to get back into things, only really tucking in after lunch. But she seems fine now, having had a proper dinner. She must have had some little stomach upset or something. We’ve learnt that dogs just do weird things sometimes.

I wrote up my next ethics class for this week, on the topic of “Cooking”. We go into things like the relationship between food and culture, the importance of cooking in today’s high–speed, modern world of fast food and pre-prepared meals, and family secret recipes.

And I made some sourdough. And tried to stay out of the heat. We have another hot day forecast for Thursday before things cool down for a bit.

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Unusual pizza and Scully dinner habits

Monday, and it was a lot cooler today and not so humid, which was a nice change. It felt like a preview of autumn, although warmer weather is coming again later in the week.

I went to the post office to mail a Magic: the Gathering card which I’d sold to someone online. A fairly old and valuable one, a few hundred dollars. I’ve decided to start selling some more of my old cards again, so this is hopefully just the start of getting the ball rolling on that.

After getting back from the post office I photographed the next batch of Irregular Webcomic! strips. I did six weeks of strips in two hours! Then I had to make tonight’s strip and get it ready for publication. Cutting it close to the bone – but I managed it. Tomorrow I’ll probably get the rest of this week completed and uploaded, and then add the next five weeks over the next week or so.

For dinner tonight I made pizza, and decided we should try something different. So I made a spicy satay sauce and used that instead of a tomato sauce base. And then the topping was broccoli and cashews. I think satay sauce is ideal with chicken, but also great with broccoli, and since my wife doesn’t eat chicken we went with the latter. It turned out pretty good, I thought, though the peanut-based sauce is a bit richer than a tomato sauce, so probably not something we’d want to do too often.

But while I was cooking, Scully needed to go outside for a toilet again. She’s been getting into this habit lately. I think this is now four times in the last eight days (it was three in the past week yesterday). And since I’m cooking, my wife has to take Scully out, and comes back several minutes after dinner is hot on the table. So she’s been having to eat lukewarm dinner several times in the past week. Hopefully it’s just a coincidence and not a conspiracy by Scully!

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Last day of summer heat

29 February, leap year day! Also the last day of summer, and Sydney really turned it on for the occasion. We reached over 40°C in some suburbs, although nearer the coast it was thankfully a few degrees cooler. I took Scully for a walk in the morning before it got too hot, but it was hot and humid enough to be uncomfortable. At lunch I just took her out briefly and kept our short walk in the shade of the trees. We went out at the same time as our new neighbour with their dog Sophie, and the two dogs are getting along pretty well, keen to see each other and wagging tails in a friendly manner. They seem to want to play, but so far the neighbours have always kept Sophie on a lead. We let Scully off in the park across the street sometimes so she can play with other dogs, but the neighbours might not be confident enough to do that.

I had 5 ethics classes today, 4 with the younger groups and one on the new Confession topic with older kids. That went well, and generated some very interesting discussion.

For dinner I made fried rice. And I spent a bit of time in the afternoon trying to write new Irregular Webcomic! strips, but I was struggling to come up with ideas and it didn’t go very well. Also perhaps because it was such a warm day and even with the air conditioning on it made me feel a bit lethargic.

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A birthday brunch

This morning we dropped Scully with one of our neighbours to mind for a few hours. They also own a dog, named Spike, and the two of them get along pretty well. They haven’t minded Scully before, but we thought they were a good choice from people we knew. They took her and Spike to Centennial Park where they said they had a good time running around.

The reason was because my wife and I were going to a birthday brunch for her mother’s birthday. It was at Long Reef Golf Club, so we couldn’t take Scully. There were seven of us there. They were only serving the breakfast menu before switching to the lunch menu later on, so we had a limited choice of things. I chose the chilli scrambled eggs, which had chorizo and cherry tomatoes as well, on sourdough toast. It was pretty good. We had a nice view of the beach as we ate.

We were back home by 13:00. Our neighbours were still out with Scully and Spike, but brought her back over when they returned an hour or so later.

My wife and I played another game of Root this afternoon with the robotic Marquise faction. We upped the difficulty by adding a couple of the optional trait cards to the Marquise, which made it a lot more formidable. It was also lucky, drawing a lot of bird cards in a row, while I, playing the Eyrie, didn’t draw any birds for about the first half of the game, which really cramped my options a lot. I came a dismal last, behind my wife, who just edged out the Marquise.

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Here’s a nice photo of Scully

I took this in the park on Saturday evening, before we went to the chai place for dinner. She has a bow tie on because she had a wash and brush at the dog groomer earlier in the day, and they give the dogs a decoration before you pick them up.

Today there’s not a lot to talk about: 4 ethics classes. Making a sourdough loaf. Making pizza for dinner. It rained a bit, so I had to dodge the incoming rain on the weather radar while taking Scully for a walk after lunch.

Last night I started rewatching IT, the 2017 horror film. Because IT Chapter Two was released recently on Netflix here, and I need a refresher of the first film before I watch the second part.

Today I also started playing with Microsoft’s Bing Image Creator, which uses DALL-E 3. I’d been using the public version of DALL-E 2, but getting frustrated at its limitations, while a friend of mine keeps sharing images he’s made with Bing, which look much better. So for some reason it turns out that you can’t access DALL-E 3 directly from the creator without paying a subscription, but if you just have a Microsoft login you can access it via Bing Image Creator. I’m not sure how that works as a pricing model, but who am I to argue? Anyway, I started playing around with it, and it’s a lot better than DALL-E 2. I’m just using the image generation for fun, to do stuff like illustrate scenes from our Dungeons & Dragons games.

Here’s one, for example. You’ll notice it’s not perfect – I specified “wingless”, but the dragon in the picture has wings.

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Last day of work for the year

Today I had four ethics classes, finishing off the “Rebuilding Civilisation” topic for the week, and my classes for the year. I’m taking two weeks off over Christmas and New Year, starting up again in January. It’s been a very interesting topic to discuss with the kids. One of the ethical questions I ask them: In a disaster situation, where your own life is in danger, do you have a responsibility to help other people survive, or look after your own survival first? Almost all of them have been pretty clear that in this situation it’s sensible and reasonable to ensure your own survival, not necessarily help other people. Some of them quoted the airline safety briefing, that when oxygen masks drop from the ceiling of the cabin, you should put your own mask on first before helping anyone else.

This evening, my wife and I agreed to do something very unusual, and go out for dinner on a Monday night. We normally only ever go out on Fridays (usually) or Saturdays if we have skipped the Friday. Well, we skipped Friday because of my D&D night, and then I just cooked something at home on Saturday. We both kind of felt like something special, so we walked up the street to the local shops and sat in the warm evening air outdoors with Scully at a bar. They do bar snacks type food, and we had arancini, haloumi sliders, and soft tacos with two different fillings: hoisin duck and pulled pork. To wash it down we had some nice cold cider. A bit decadent, but very delicious!

Oh, and the other day I took a Christmas portrait of Scully, after her grooming appointment.

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Catching up with Scully’s old friend

Back in June, our neighbours in the apartment next door moved out, taking Scully’s fellow poodle and best friend Luna with them. We hadn’t seen them since – in fact for the past month or more they’ve been in Spain (with Luna being boarded at a dog stay farm here near Sydney). But they’re back, and my wife organised a casual meeting since they were in the area today to visit Luna’s vet for routine vaccinations.

We met up in the park across the street from our place. It was so funny because I saw them all walking down the hill towards the park and when they passed our place Luna turned to walk in, just as if she still lived there! But when she saw us and Scully, she got super excited and wanted to run across the street to say hello, and Scully was the same. We let them off their leads in the park and they ran around together for several minutes, playing and chasing each other. It was great to see. And we caught up with Luna’s owners, discussing their trip, and also our trip to Japan back in June, and how their new home is, and so on.

A few hours afterwards, late in the afternoon, my wife suggested we take a walk with Scully over to Naremburn, where one of our favourite bakeries is, but also the Flat Rock Brew Cafe, which brews its own beers. She said we could get a drink and a snack before dinner. I had a very nice milk stout, my wife some pinot noir, and we shared a bowl of beer-battered chips.

After walking home and allowing that to go down a bit, I made baked cauliflower and hummus for dinner – something simple and not too heavy after the chips. It turned out really nice.

Oh, and this morning I did a 7.5k run. I felt I could push past the 5ks I did last weekend, but not quite up to another 10k yet. And I spent a bit of time today looking at restaurants in Rome, where we’ll be in a couple of weeks. I thought I could do a bit of research and book a couple of nice ones in advance. I’ve booked one, but a couple of others had no free bookings when we’ll be there. I might look a bit more tomorrow.

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