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Getting things done

This morning I thought I wanted to get another 5k run done, because I’ll have limited opportunity for the rest of the week, due to having an ISO Photography Standards meeting. It’s an online meeting, from 8:00 to 11:30 every morning in my time zone. I don’t really have time to do it before, if you include having breakfast and cooling down and probably having a shower to be comfortable for the meeting, and the afternoon is not a great option in our summer, and evenings are usually busy with other stuff. (I don’t think I’ve ever done a run in the evening.)

But this morning I also had to get some blood drawn for a cholesterol test, after fasting, so I couldn’t have breakfast before. So I wanted to get that done as soon as the pathology lab opened, and then go home and have breakfast… and by the time I was ready to go run it was approaching 10 o’clock. But fortunately it’s very cool today, with overcast skies keeping the sun out. So I got ready and went for the run.

I wanted to see if I could break 30 minutes for the 5k on the street route I’ve worked out, which is about as flat as I can find in this area. But it’s still a bit hilly, with an elevation gain of 87 metres over the 5k. I started hard, but when I hit the uphill sections about halfway through I thought maybe I’d gone too hard and would run out of steam before finishing. But I pushed through and managed to complete the 5k in 28:39! Much better than I’d hoped for.

Energised, I got stuck into writing a lesson outline for my planned initial class on Outschool: Human Vision and Colour Perception. I wrote out a list of bullet points of topics to cover. Then I made a list of diagrams and illustrations that I want to have. Many of these I could find on the Internet – however Outschool insists (justifiably) that you have legal rights to use any images you present in your classes. Which rules out most of what you can find – doubly so for scientific diagrams. There are a many good diagrams, but all covered by copyright, or which need to be purchased, or which are at least Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike, which is no good because I can’t easily include correct attribution in class materials and don’t necessarily want to release my material under the same licence.

So I’ve decided I need to draw the diagrams myself. So I have a list of diagrams, and now I need to sit down and draw them all. I did manage to get one done today, after fiddling with a couple of different drawing apps on my iPad. I’ll get stuck into the rest tomorrow.

I also had a combination of thoughts prompted by two things:

1. Earlier today I saw a question on AskReddit:

To those who think to themselves, “I should do this today,” and then end up doing it: is it possible to learn this power?

With several answers along the lines of: “When you think you should do something, just get up and do it, don’t put it off.”

2. I was thinking I really need to watch more of Neon Genesis Evangelion to get through all of the series, but how the heck am I going to find the time to do that…?

This made me realise that watching TV is one of the things that I procrastinate and never manage to get done. I always have too many other things that I want to do, so much so that I often end up thinking “I should watch some TV” and then never get around to it.

So maybe in order for me to achieve this goal, I need to stop putting off watching TV and just sit on my arse and DO IT.

New content today:

Pumpkin seed sourdough

Today was another baking day. This time i tried adding some pumpkin seeds on top of the sourdough loaf.

I used all of the seeds I had handy without opening a new packet. I think it needs a bit more than that to be really effective, and I probably need to roll the shaped loaf in the seeds to embed them and get them to stick a bit better. Live and learn! But it tastes good.

Apart from that and taking Scully on a long walk with my wife, it was a pretty easy day. We also watched some more Doctor Who, working our way through the new series 11, Jodie Whittaker’s first episodes. I must say I was very surprised when I first heard Whittaker’s accent – I had not expected that at all. The stories so far don’t seem quite as good as previous seasons, but hopefully they’ll hit their stride soon.

I’m also getting through Neon Genesis Evangelion. I’m a bit more than halfway through the episodes, and things are starting to get… very interesting.

New content today:

Lots of vegetables

Because of my scheduled golf lesson tomorrow morning, I moved grocery shopping to from Friday to Thursday and did it this morning. I bought a bunch of different vegetables for the week ahead: cauliflower, zucchini, potatoes, red capsicum (or pepper to non-Australians), green beans, and mushrooms. That should be enough to mix and match for a week’s meals, when combined with pasta, rice, lentils, and other stuff from the pantry.

When I got home I discovered we still have broccoli that I bought last week, as well as the Brussels sprouts that I knew we had. I cooked the sprouts for dinner tonight with garlic and chilli and miso paste, and we had that as a side to some hemp burger patties. Basically, we’re loaded with vegetables.

Last night I started watching a new movie on Netflix, #Alive. I enjoyed Train to Busan, so another Korean zombie movie seemed like a good idea. I stopped halfway through to go to bed at a reasonable time and will watch the rest in a day or so. I’m enjoying it so far. It even seems like it could be set in same time/events as Train to Busan. I wonder if they’re meant to be part of the same continuity.

I’ve also just watched the second last episode of The Queen’s Gambit, which has been enthralling. I’m looking forward to the final episode.

In other news, the Australian Museum had a ceremony today before reopening on Saturday after a long closure for extensive renovations. This has always been my favourite museum in Sydney, and I’m very excited to go visit soon and see what it looks like now. I’ll have to make a trip some day before school ends for the year and it gets overrun with students every day.

New content today:

Running the middle distance

I tried to do a 5k run this morning, but I was so uninspired halfway through that I stopped after 3k instead. It didn’t help that the weather is so humid now, although it was a lot cooler than yesterday.

Apart from that, mostly I worked on Darths & Droids writing today. In between cooking a few things – for lunch, dinner, and in mid-afternoon putting together something for dessert to chill in the fridge. Just a simple concoction of wheatmeal biscuits and mascarpone, to use up some leftover mascarpone from the other day. I had it with a scoop of ice cream on top.

Oh, I’ve been watching The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix with my wife. We’re really enjoying it. A friend of mine recommended it to me, and he was spot on.

New content today:

A day in hospital

Admission into hospital for my colonoscopy was scheduled for 7am this morning, so I had to get up at 6, so my wife could drive me there. After she had breakfast, and I took Scully out, since I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink anything. It was very cold out there this morning.

I was checked into the hospital on time at 7:00. I had to prepare and wait around until about 8:30 when they wheeled me in for the procedure and the anaesthetist put a cannula into my arm…. and next thing I knew I was waking up in recovery and the time was 9:15. The doctor told me it went fine, but he’s sent a bit of tissue off for biopsy just to make sure it’s not a problem. My wife picked me up and I was home in time to celebrate being able to eat again by walking up the street to get some pies!

This afternoon I worked on some Darths & Droids scripts.

And had a conversation (online) with friends that basically went like this:

Friend 1: I’m excited about the game show Only Connect coming to SBS Viceland. [It’s a British show that hasn’t been televised in Australia before.]
Friend 2: Why is a game show on a channel called “Viceland”? I assumed it was all crime dramas and stuff like that.
Me: There are other game shows on it. I always assumed the “Vice” referred to TV shows that are “guilty pleasures”.

I turned and asked my wife, “What do you think the Vice in SBS Viceland refers to?” I was thinking she’d support one or other of the aforementioned theories, and then we could do some statistics.

She said, “It’s the second SBS channel. So Vice… second… you know, like Vice-President.”

🤔

So I turned to the trusty Internet and tried to find out what the “Vice” in SBS Viceland means. It turns out it’s none of those theories. Viceland used to be named SBS 2, but was rebranded to Viceland in partnership with the Canadian media company named Vice Media, which originally began in 1994 as a magazine named Voice of Montreal, which aimed at an alternative punk youth audience. The magazine changed owners in 1996, and the new owners renamed it which changed its name to Vice. Although Wikipedia doesn’t say why, I’m guessing because the word is similar to “voice”, but just sounds more edgy.

So, ultimately, SBS Viceland is named that for no good reason whatsoever. It’s almost a shame to learn that.

New content today:

Into August

This fine Saturday morning my wife and I took Scully on a long walk, dong a 5 kilometre loop from our place, past our favourite bakery where we got some sourdough bread. Scully got to meet a lot of dogs today, and we did some ball throwing and chasing down by the marina. A lot of people were out walking this morning, enjoying the sunshine.

It’s the first day of August and flowers are appearing all over the place. The magnolias started a few weeks ago, but now azaleas are coming out, and I expect cherry blossoms will be along soon. It really feels like the worst of winter is over and things are warming up for spring.

Back home, it was housework day, with vacuuming and cleaning the bathroom and shower to be done. I also checked on the car floor mats that I washed yesterday. They’ve been drying for over 24 hours now and they’re still noticeably wet. I’m hoping they’ll finally dry out overnight so we can put them back in the car tomorrow before my wife needs to use it.

This evening we watched another episode of the new Doctor Who‘s 9th season.It’s been so long that I only have vague memories of the episodes and can’t remember how the story unfolded, so it’s almost as good as watching it unspoiled.

New content today:

The calm before the storm

That storm is forecast to hit Sydney tomorrow, but today dawned beautiful and clear. It’s clouded in and there are odd showers now, but it should intensify overnight.

Most of the morning I spent doing housecleaning and various other chores. Then I spent some time writing up a review of the sausage roll I had at the bakery yesterday, and editing and uploading a bunch of photos from my old trip to Thailand. Here’s a seafood stall in the Anusarn Night Market in Chiang Mai:

This evening my wife and I started back into watching Doctor Who. We’ve bought all the boxed sets of the recent series, but fell out of watching them some time ago, so now we’re a few seasons behind. We decided it was time to get stuck into them, and so tonight we watched the season 9 Christmas special: Last Christmas. Wow, it was really good. Definitely looking forward to watching the rest of the series.

New content today:

Nothing Saturday

Oops! I forgot to post anything on Saturday (it’s now Sunday morning here). Probably because almost nothing happened. I can barely remember what I did…

I posted a new Snot Block & Roll review (of an old sample). And I did some work on an old travel diary and photos from a trip to Thailand in 2005. And not much else.

I’ve been getting into the Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House. And finished watching season 2 of the new Lost in Space. Yeah, not a very productive day.

New content today:

Long weekend Monday

Today I spent time with my wife again, since it was a holiday. We decided to go out for morning tea to a cafe we like that’s about an hour’s drive away, in the semi-rural outer suburbs of Sydney, called Geranium Cottage. (Yes, the website looks like it was designed in the 1990s.)

We like it there because they do a good plate of scones with strawberry jam and cream. We split one of those, and also a serve of the home made banana and walnut bread. Wife had coffee, but not being a caffeine drinker I stuck with water. The menu here is full of tempting treats, and they also had a chocolate brownie, which the menu annotated with “(very rich)”. So we sat for a while enjoying the rural ambience, and then ordered one of those too. I was so full after this that I didn’t bother having lunch at all, and ate nothing until dinner this evening.

On the way home we stopped at a small park where Scully could run around off lead and get some exercise. We park across the road in the yard of an historic church, St Jude’s Anglican of Dural. The original church building is a small sandstone structure completed in 1848, which now paints a picturesque scene:

And the rear:

It looks like it can only fit about a dozen people inside. It’s preserved now as a heritage listed building. On the grounds is also a larger, more modern building, which is presumably used for services these days.

We’ve just been watching some TV shows this evening. We’re getting into the second season of Lost in Space on Netflix, and we also watched some comedy shows on broadcast channels. It’s good to sit back and have a laugh every now and then.

New content today:

First day of spring

It’s officially spring and the weather was very spring-like, with warm sunshine drying up the rain of the past few days. I spent much of the day out with my wife and Scully, enjoying the fresh air. We went to two different parks to let Scully run around and chase tennis balls, and stopped off for lunch at a bakery where we hadn’t been before. It was pretty good! I wrote up a review for my food blog: Snot Block & Roll.

That was about it, really, apart from a bit of housecleaning and a relaxing evening watching episodes of Northern Exposure. Wife and I decided to start rewatching the series form Episode 1 again. Tomorrow I’m planning to photograph the latest batch of comic scripts that I’ve been working on the past few days, so that’s a big day of creative work ahead.

New content today: