weather – Page 28 – dangermouse.net

Double cold weekend

Sunday dawned cold and windy, much as yesterday, although today we managed a degree higher, with 17°C being the maximum temperature in Sydney. Again I stayed indoors for most of the day, only venturing out with my wife and Scully for a bit of afternoon play and exercise in a nearby park. They also visited my mother-in-law for morning tea, leaving me at home to deal with constructing the final few Irregular Webcomic! strips from the current batch, and launch into writing annotations for them.

Oh, but if you were worried about me freezing to death in this horrid 16-17°C Antarctic cold, don’t despair. The forecast for the coming week has our Sydney winter temperatures back up to a comfortable 26°C.

I’m currently in the middle of writing an annotation for one, which requires a considerable amount of work and research. I’ve written 1900 words so far, and am not even really close to being finished. I’ll have to leave it until tomorrow.

Last night to relax during the evening I watch the 1986 movie Labyrinth, for the first time ever. I feel like I was catching up on a bit of my childhood that I somehow missed at the time. It was exactly the sort of movie I would have watched and enjoyed as a child, except for some reason I never did see it at the time. Although in a modern sense the film is very dated and not very sophisticated, I enjoyed watching it – perhaps more for the sense that it made me feel like a kid again than for its own intrinsic quality.

New content today:

Cold cold day

Today was billed as the coldest day of the year for Sydney and much of south-eastern Australia, as a cold mass of Antarctic air made its way up the coast. By coldest day of the year, we mean the temperature only reached a maximum of 16°C in Sydney today. It was also very windy, so it felt colder than that.

Large regions of the inland countryside got snow, but being right on the coast and close to sea level, we don’t get such conditions here. Still, it was cold enough that my wife and I basically did nothing all day but sit inside and try to stay warm. We ventured out at lunchtime to take Scully for a walk and grab some spinach and feta rolls from a nearby pie shop. Although cold and windy, Scully had a good run around in the park, chasing a tennis ball and returning it.

Besides various bits of housework, my wife and I played a game of Deep Blue, and watched some Doctor Who, and I assembled a few more comics from the recent batch. And that’s about it!

New content today:

August is the windy month

August is always the windy month in Sydney. There were some showers around today, but it was mostly dry – but it was very windy. I walked up to the supermarket to buy some milk and eggs first thing, then took Scully for a walk down to Berry Island. We didn’t stay there long though, because of the wind whipping straight across the Harbour and blowing off the water.

So we walked back home along more sheltered streets. Scully is good at walking home, and we usually let her walk off leash along routes that she knows.

One thing I noticed while out today is that new green spring growth is starting to appear on some of the deciduous trees. In particular, a lot of magnolias are starting to finish their flowering run and produce lots of green leaves. The last few days have been cold, but there have already been a few spring-like days earlier, and we should be getting temperatures up to 22°C or so later this week.

Today I received a mail ordered book: the Star Wars: Age of Rebellion roleplaying game core book. I got the other two core books in the line—Edge of the Empire and Force and Destiny—cheaply at a closing down sale, and have really been enjoying reading them and looking forward to running some Star Wars games, so I decided I had to have the complete set. It’s always fun and exciting getting a new roleplaying game book!

New content today:

Cold and wet end to the week

It was cold and soggy today. The sort of day where you just want to stay inside with a hot drink and not get out of your slippers. Which I mostly managed, except for taking Scully out for a bit of an exercise mid-morning.

And heading out for Friday night dinner with my wife. We had arranged for our neighbour to look after Scully on a play date with Luna the poodle next door. Originally the plan was that we’d go out to a nice restaurant and sit indoors, which we can’t do with Scully, but my wife decided we should sit outside anyway given COVID. So we just went to a local burger place and ate on the benches outside. It was good though! And not too rainy, so the walk up and back was not bad.

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 storm?

The storm did finally hit overnight and we got a bit of heavy rain, but by the time I got up this morning the rain had stopped. Although it was cold and windy all day, and the rain did return at spotty intervals. But honestly it was nothing like the apocalypse that the weather bureau had warned us to expect. By lunchtime the sun was coming out again in between the odd showers, whereas I’d been prepared for a full day of torrential downpour. They forecast up to 50mm of rain today, but in the end we only got 13mm.

For a morning excursion I took Scully out to the hardware store, driving rather than walking. It’s next door to the home-maker centre which has dozens of furnishing shops as well as the pet shop, so we got to go in there too and Scully had a sniff up and down all the aisles of pet food. We got a bit wet walking between the two buildings, but not too bad. I also dropped off a box of electronic stuff, cables, light bulbs, and used batteries at the local recycling centre which is just around the corner from there too.

Tonight for dinner I recreated last night’s roast potato and pumpkin pizza. We always have two pizzas during what we call “pizza week” because the ready made bases come in packs of two. (I’m too lazy to make my own pizza bases from scratch each time.)

And then for dessert I made myself… a deconstructed rum ball!

My wife bought me a madeira cake for a treat, which is what I use as the main ingredient to make rum balls – which I’ve made many times. But this time I thought I’d try something a little avant-garde and create myself a deconstructed dessert. After plating up (and taking photos) I sat down to eat it, mixing the ingredients with a desert fork on the plate… and it was both fun and delicious! 9/10 would do again!

New content today:

More calm before the storm?

So they told us that we’d get heavy rain today. It hasn’t rained a drop, and was sunny most of the day. There was some dramatic cloud building up late this afternoon, but as of mid-evening still not a drop of rain. Supposedly we’re still in for heavy rain and strong winds tomorrow… but I’ll believe it when I see it. It was cold though.

This was the view over the city about 4:30pm.

This morning I walked up to the shops to buy a couple of things. I needed to get some batteries because the ones for the remote in our air conditioner died and we couldn’t turn the heat on or off without raiding the DVD remote for batteries – and then couldn’t control the DVD player without switching them back. And since I was going to the shops anyway, I thought I’d get some chocolate sprinkles that I want for a dessert. However when I was up there I completely forgot to get the chocolate sprinkles.

And then later in the morning I took Scully out for a walk, and I went the other direction to the other nearby shops, where there’s a small supermarket. While there, I popped in to get the chocolate sprinkles… and they had ten different varieties of cake sprinkles… all colours and flavours, but no chocolate! So in two trips to two different supermarkets I didn’t manage to get them.

I also failed to get another thing I wanted from the Japanese grocery store. I wanted ramen noodles so I could make myself some ramen for lunch. But they only had udon and somen noodles, which are thicker and thinner respectively. I made do with somen, but honestly I find them too thin. But I did use them to make a pseudo-ramen for lunch:

I even made a soft-boiled egg to put in. It turned out pretty good. And for dinner I roasted some kipfler potato slices and pumpkin chunks and a clove of garlic, before putting them on a pizza.

This afternoon I worked a bit on a new tagging system for Square Root of Minus Garfield (plus other mezzacotta comics). I made a database table and populated it with tags and descriptions. This is a project that’s been on my to-do list for ages, and I though it wouldn’t be too difficult or time consuming, and I have a volunteer on the forums who wants to go through and tag all the comics, so that makes it a good opportunity to get it done.

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:

Friday/Saturday combined update

I missed Friday’s post due to being busy in the evening. I went out for dinner with my wife and Scully to a local Mexican place. Nowhere near as good as Mexican food in California, alas, but it’s passably good. But the place was busy and we were the only ones sitting outside in the cold winter night (since Scully was with us), and the service ended up being a little slow, so we took longer than expected. And then when I got home, my fortnightly board games night with friends was already underway, so I dived straight into that, and didn’t get time to write a blog post.

Saturday morning was housework time – cleaning the bathroom and the shower, and vacuuming and stuff. It was cold today, we only reached 17°C, and there was a slight breeze which made it feel colder. But still not as cold as it sometimes can get in Sydney – in fact I’d say we haven’t had a seriously cold day yet this winter.

I saw the first magnolia flowers a few days ago, but only took a photo today.

This isn’t a lone earlybird bloom either. There were several on the same tree, and more on another couple of magnolia trees that I passed today. I pay attention to when the magnolia flowers first appear every winter, and have been noticing that they are consistently getting earlier every year. This year is just ridiculously early. The first photo I have of magnolias last year was from 10 July, so this year they’re a week earlier again. A few years ago, they wouldn’t appear until August, and years before that, late August or even September.

The TV news tonight had a story on the dry, mild winter we’ve been having, saying that it could be a precursor to another horrible fire season like we had last summer. It’s all a bit depressing really.

On the positive side… I did some tax accounting and ticked off a few tasks that I needed to do with respect to recording deductions and stuff like that. The new tax year just started here in Australia, so I have the 2019-2020 tax return to do soon. Fun fun fun.

New content today:

Scully blech

I didn’t sleep well last night, due to Scully getting up at 2am and being sick. Fortunately I grabbed her in time and took her to a wooden floor so she didn’t vomit on the carpet. She hadn’t eaten any dinner either, so it was all just stomach fluid. Something must have upset her tummy yesterday, putting her off her food, and then causing the vomiting.

I didn’t really get back to sleep properly after that. But fortunately by morning she had her appetite back and seemed bright and cheerful all day today. Hopefully she’s got it out of her system. My wife and I took her for a nice long walk, doing our usual Sunday morning loop, which we’ve skipped for a few weeks because it’s been raining a fair bit lately. Today was dry, but overcast and very cold, quite possibly the coldest day of the year so far.

I just looked it up… close. Sydney recorded a maximum of 15.4°C today, but we had a maximum of just 15.1°C on 2 June. Today was actually the second coldest day of the year so far.

New content today: