weather – dangermouse.net

An easy Saturday and a closed restaurant

I was glad that I did a 5k run yesterday, because this morning’s weather was miserable. Cold and rainy and still very, very windy. But the awful weather eased up today and the sun finally came out in the afternoon, heating things up and releasing a ton of humidity into the air.

I basically took it easy, doing some comics stuff and random puttering around. I took Scully for a walk at lunch without my wife, and we got fish and chips for lunch. We planned to stay in for dinner again, but my wife got a hankering for dinner at Organica restaurant, so we walked up there with Scully early in the evening. This has become her new favourite restaurant, after the closure of some of our other favourites over the years.

But when we got there, it had closed down! The furniture and signage had all been removed! My wife checked online and sure enough, it’s listed as permanently closed. So that was a big disappointment. We walked over to Green Gourmet, the vegetarian place that last time said we were welcome to bring Scully inside. So we popped in and they confirmed Scully was welcome. I actually don’t think this is technically legal in New South Wales – dogs are allowed in commercial outdoor dining areas, but not indoors. But it’s on them, so we were happy to enjoy a nice meal there. Another couple came in with a dog too while we were there, and they looked like regulars, as the staff greeted them and knew the dog by name.

Not much else to say about today.

New content today:

An extremely windy day

Everything about today was about the wind. It was extremely windy. A bit of rain, overcast and cloudy, but super super windy. I had two incidents. I went for a 5k run in the morning, and leaves were blowing all over the place, and bits of twigs, and one actually got stuck in my shoelaces and I had to stop running briefly to extract it. When I’d finished and was walking back home I passed a broken lamp post, which had suffered a fatal hit from a fallen tree branch.

I took the photo because there’s an app here where you can report incidents like this to the local council, so they know about it and can come fix it.

At lunch I didn’t want to brave the wind and so drove to my wife’s work to pick up Scully. On the way home we stopped off at Maggio’s Bakery where I got a porchetta roll for lunch. This is a thing I’ve been wanting to try for some time, but I usually default to a slice of pizza when I go there. But today they were out of pizza, so I tried the roll. It comes with sliced porchetta, chunks of potato, rosemary, and mayonnaise, and was delicious.

On the way driving home, I turned down a street and ahead of me was a roadblock, with emergency workers in the middle of removing a tree that had fallen across the road. I had to turn around and backtrack and find another route home. (I didn’t get a photo of it since I was driving.) We’re predicted to have similar weather tomorrow, though easing off a bit.

Otherwise, I did my four ethics classes, did a bit of puttering around with comics stuff, and made potato and pesto pasta for dinner. And tonight is board games night online. We just played a couple of games of Codenames, using the dedicated Codenames site rather than Board Game Area since for some weird reason one of my friends can’t load their site.

New content today:

The backwards day

After last night’s storm, the rain continued through the night and cold winds blew in. Today’s maximum temperature was at 1:30 am, at 21.1°C, and it just got colder from there. The minimum temperature was at 1:00 pm, at 18.3°C, and then since then the rain and wind has eased off and the temperature has climbed again! We may set another maximum later this evening. Very weird.

It really was a big storm. By this morning there were still over 100,000 properties without power. This was combined with industrial action by our train drivers here in Sydney, who didn’t exactly strike, but did a go-slow on the train network, so this morning we had heavy rain, a lot of trees and power lines down, and reduced capacity on the train network. So it was pretty miserable for anyone having to commute to work.

After two classes in the morning, I took Scully for a walk at lunch, in the rain. We went up to the pie shop, which has been closed for a few weeks over Christmas, so I haven’t had my regular fix. I like the spicy ones, so chose the butter chicken and Mexican beef ones today.

In the afternoon I processed some more photos from 2023’s trip to Japan, and used some of them to fill in my travel diary page for the day. I really want to get all the photos from that trip sorted before I go to Japan again next month! Here’s an amusing photo that I didn’t put into the diary:

And in other travel news, I’ve managed to book a hotel in Berlin for my June trip. The first hotel never got back to me about the corporate rate, but the second hotel I emailed got back the same day with full details and took my booking when I replied to confirm. So good business to them, and none to the first one that never responded! I can leave that trip for a while now and think about it again after we get back from Japan. I still have some things to organise for our itinerary there first.

New content today:

A big storm

As I’m writing this tonight a severe thunderstorm is lashing the city outside. Two of my friends have lost power at their homes (and are chatting online from their phones). I had three ethics classes in a row this evening and told the kids in the last class that if my power went out and I disconnected from Zoom, then the class will be over for today, and least they’ll know what happened.

Until the storm hit, it was a hot and humid day. But the wind has picked up and the temperatures has dropped dramatically in the last hour, as the rain pounds down and the lightning flashes. I just checked the power outage website and there are over 100 separate outages across Sydney, with over 61,000 buildings affected at the moment. Wind gusts up to 100 km/h have been recorded too. And… wow… we had 30 mm of rain in just half an hour. And it’s still coming down.

The good news is tomorrow and the next few days will be cooler than the past few days, down to around 25°C, although rainy.

Today I had some totally free time in the morning since my wife took Scully to work. I thought about going out somewhere, but in the end I started tidying up my email inbox… and three hours later I realised I still hadn’t gone out. Then I spent some time in the afternoon pricing up some more Magic: the Gathering cards in preparation for selling them. And then did some thinking about planning story stuff for Episode IX in Darths & Droids.

New content today:

That La Niña arrived quickly

I just said yesterday that the Bureau of Meteorology reported the formation of La Niña conditions, heralding the possibility of a cooler/wetter next two months of summer, and today it magically seemed to have come true. Today was really chilly, and very wet. The temperature was a minimum of 19.3°C overnight, and rose to only 20.3°C during the late morning, before plummeting down into the 17s for most of the afternoon and evening. We’ve had nearly 30 mm of rain as well, in windy squalls blowing intermittently across the city, which make it seem even colder. It was actually the coldest day in Sydney since mid-October.

I didn’t go out much, but I did get in a 5k run early in the morning. I started in a brief period of no rain, but it began raining on me halfway through the run

My wife took Scully to work and I had to go pick her up at lunchtime, but I drove rather than walking in the heavy rain at the time.

This evening I was really back into my online ethics classes, with three classes in a row. I had a new girl in the first one, who was very sociable and talkative, and engaged with the class questions really well, giving some very well thought-out answers. And after the class she wrote me a note through the Outschool platform to say how much she loved the class and how it made her think about the topic in new ways. That was really nice to receive. So I think I have a new enthusiastic student, which is great!

New content today:

Missed Monday, back to work Tuesday

I just completely forgot to do my blog post yesterday until it was too late. I had a day full of working on comics stuff, and avoiding going outside as much as possible because it was very hot.

However I did have to go out in the morning to drop the car off for an annual service, and then walk home in the heat – it’s about 25 minutes walk away. And then in the afternoon I had to walk back to the service centre to pick the car up again. There was an additional expense as the car needed a new battery installed, but otherwise it’s in good condition.

The heat broke with a cool change overnight, bringing some rain. Today was gloomily overcast all day, much cooler, and threatening rain, although there was barely a sprinkle. The Bureau of Meteorology today issued a report that La Niña conditions had returned, which may indicate increased rainfall for the remainder of the summer. I’d been enjoying the relatively dry conditions for the past few weeks, after the rain-soaked and very humid summers of the past four years.

Today I did some more comics stuff, making the first strip of Episode IX for Darths & Droids. I ran out of things to make lunch with at home, so had to go out and decided to get some pies. But when I got there the pie shop was closed! Probably still on a Christmas break. I ended up getting some Vietnamese rice paper rolls instead. Then I caught the Metro to my wife’s work to pick up Scully and walk home from there with her.

Tonight I restarted my online ethics classes, after two weeks break for Christmas and New Year. The new topic this week is Journalism. With questions such as:

Is it generally more important for news to be reported quickly, or accurately?
What purpose does journalism serve in our society? Why does it exist?
How can we tell if the news we see is really true?
Has the Internet made journalism better or worse?

It should be an interesting week!

New content yesterday:

New content today:

Early board games night

I’m able to write this post tonight because we had our fortnightly Friday night board games gathering early this week. There were only four of us who could make it, and one friend wanted to bring his young daughter along, so we decided to start at my place at 4pm instead of the usual 6pm, and finish early so they could go home before it got too late.

Because we had a young girl (about 9 years old, I’d guess – I didn’t ask how old she was), we played some lighter games with her first. We started with a game of King of Tokyo. Then we played a few hands of Uno: Show ‘Em No Mercy to start. Then while the girl entertained herself with an iPad and headphones the rest of us played a game of Evergreen. Then she rejoined us for a game of Camel Up (second edition). And finally we rounded things off with some hands of Uno Flip!

We ordered pizza during the gaming and also had plentiful snacks. I was hoping to have them eat some of the copious sweet things we have leftover from Christmas, but they brought so much other stuff that there wasn’t much room for those.

Earlier in the day we basically just took it easy, staying inside as it was extremely hot out. It reached over 37°C in the city, and just a fraction shy of 40°C in some suburbs, despite an early storm which dumped heavy rain about 9 o’clock in the morning. That just served to keep the humidity up. Another storm hit about 4:30pm, which dropped the temperature rapidly. We now have a strong southerly blowing, which will cool things more overnight. Tomorrow should hopefully be nowhere near as hot.

We did take Scully out in the late morning, after the first storm, but not for a long walk. We just went to the nearby park, where she could run on the grass and there was plenty of shade, rather than walking on hot concrete paths.

New content today:

Cool relief, Christmas ham

Today was thankfully much cooler than yesterday. We had a stiff breeze blowing and the temperature only reached around 24°C. Rather than having the air conditioning on all day, I had the windows all wide open. It rained a bit in the morning, including when I went out for a 5k run. I managed a much faster time than any other recent run, in the cooler air.

Then I drove over to the nearest Aldi supermarket that has parking – there’s one a bit closer but it’s in a business area with lots of office buildings and impossible to park anywhere nearby. So I almost never go into Aldi. But I wanted to today to pick up a Christmas ham. I also grabbed a few other things while there: a Christmas stollen, a panettone, and some brie and sliced turkey for making lunch sandwiches.

After eating a lunch of turkey and brie sandwiches on my home made sourdough bread, I walked up to my wife’s work to pick up Scully. And when we got home I worked on some more Darths & Droids comics, trying to build up a buffer.

I made some pesto pasta with broccoli for dinner, before my three ethics classes in a row, which took up the evening.

New content today:

Hot weather, southerly buster

The record-breaking heatwave affecting inland Australia made its way to the east coast today. Inland suburbs of Sydney touched 42°C, but it remained a bit cooler nearer the coast where I am, thankfully, in the low 30s. But the humidity was still over 50% in the hottest part of the day here, whereas inland it dropped into the 20s for that dry heat effect.

Knowing this was the forecast, I took Scully out for a long walk around 7am, before it got too hot. We did the Waverton loop, going around the harbour shore. There’s one house that we pass where the owners always plant sunflowers, and they were in bloom.

The birds were out in force in the morning, especially by the water. I spotted this group of eight little black cormorants… or was it seven with a clever imposter??

(Spoiler: It’s a silver gull.) I did a couple of bird counts for eBird and recorded 18 different species.

Back home, I sheltered in the air conditioning for most of the day. working on Darths & Droids comics. I want to get ahead because there’ll be some time spent story planning for Episode IX when we start that very soon. And I need to build up a buffer for upcoming trips in the new year.

This evening I had the first class of the final week’s critical & ethical thinking topic for the year. We’re just having fun this week, with hypothetical “What if?” questions, getting the kids to think through logical consequences of weird scenarios. For example: What if social media likes were used as money? What if nobody agreed what colour anything was? What if everyone had a twin who it was impossible to tell apart?

The last one generated some very interesting discussion. One kid said people could commit crimes and nobody could be punished, because it would be impossible to know if you arrested the correct twin, and you’d have to avoid punishing the incorrect person. But another kid suggested that if it was truly impossible to tell the twins apart, they might be treated like a single person, and share one identity, one bank account, one job, etc. And if either one committed a crime, both would be punished. Actually all of the questions generated interesting discussions of the consequences. So it was a lot of fun. Perfect for the last class before Christmas.

Just after 8pm the southerly buster arrived with force. This is the local name for the cold front coming through from the south which rapidly reduces the temperature after a hot day, and brings cold strong winds and thunderstorms. We had very close lightning and loud thunder, and about 30 minutes of absolutely torrential rain, before it eased off. Thankfully it’s a lot cooler outside now, although the humidity has skyrocketed back around 95%. Tomorrow is forecast to be much cooler than today, around 25°C. Phew!

New content today:

Hotness, classes, and D&D logging

Today was very warm. Much of Australia is enduring an heatwave, with the highest temperatures we’ve seen in five years (the past four summers have been cooler and wetter thanks to La Niña). Some towns in western New South Wales today were expected to potentially break their highest ever recorded temperatures, around 47°C. Inland suburbs of Sydney got into the high 30s, but fortunately the coastal strip was significantly cooler, reaching only 29°C in the city. But the humidity remains stupidly high, so it felt oppressive being out there.

After two morning ethics classes, I walked with Scully up to the fish & chip shop, and grabbed an Express Post envelope from the adjacent post office for mailing some documents. I didn’t want to walk back with the large envelope, and a box of fish & chips, and have to carry Scully over the parts of the road and footpaths that were baking in the sun and would have burnt her feet, so I ordered my lunch to eat in at the outdoor tables. Although these are shaded, it was so hot and humid sitting there that the sweat was just rolling down my face and body.

I got back home in time for my afternoon classes. After those I completed writing up a log of the previous Dungeons & Dragons session that we played back in October, which I hadn’t yet written up. Thankfully I’m now fully up to date with the campaign logs, all 12 sessions played so far. Next time we meet we should be starting a new adventure, which will be nice. Although the party has to contend with a curse placed on them by the God of Swords: to kill 9 people with 9 different swords in 9 days, or die! My players are a fairly moralistic group, so this presents them with a significant ethical dilemma. They’re not just going to go around and slaughter the next 9 people they come across. It will be very interesting to see how they deal with this.

For dinner I made a cool falafel salad. I tried boiling two eggs to add to the salads, but I think I must have set the stove too low to simmer them, and the first one I tried to peel was too soft-boiled. I boiled the second egg for another 5 minutes and it came out fine, so we ended up with half an egg each instead of a whole one in our salads.

New content today: