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A Claytons Holiday ... with Ducks!
Jul. 27th, 2020 09:02 amFriday afternoon marked the moment when I begin a one-week Claytons Holiday, the holiday you have when you're not having a holiday. I have accumulated too much leave according to the powers that be, and as I result I had a cunning plan to go visit friends in Adelaide for several days. Then, the world being what it is, my home city has a second outbreak of The Plague, not helped by the fact that almost ninety percent of those sick are not self-isolating when they have initial symptoms and over half when they have tests. There are structural problems of course; rubbish employers, casualisation of the workforce and lack of paid pandemic leave. But there is also a fair degree of irresponsible individualism and a smaller number of hoax-believers; an issue which New Zeland-Aotearoa did not face. So with the upswing of community transmissions, masks are now mandatory in the city and surrounds, and my planned trip to Adelaide to visit friends and wineries has become a future dream.
The early portion of yesterday left me wondering what the hell I was going to do for the coming week, which is hilarious in hindsight given my extensive "to do" list and the fact that I am working on multiple postgraduate degrees, books, journals, presentations, languages, etc. I've picked out about a dozen items from said list most of which will take around half a day to complete which also leaves my usual free time for my usual extracurricular activities. In recent days, I should also note, includes a submission to the Victorian ALP's administrators on party reform to prevent branch-stacking, a session write-up for my regular Eclipse Phase game, a piece on Linux utilities for image processing, specifically, Batch Image Processing, and finally, a review of Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius. The latter is dedicated to Richard Barker, on the first anniversary of his death, who was a particularly good example of Stoic philosophy himself. I am fortunate to have encountered such influences in my life.
It is not often that I have even the remotest excuse to make comment about ducks in my journal, but there have been three duck-related experiences in recent days so they can be combined into a single paragraph of anatidae recognition. The first was the discovery of a pair of ducks in the locally introduced wetlands, which was just built some eighteen months or so prior. Of course with the Yarra River being so close there such birds are common, but this is the first time some have made it thus far, which bodes well for the future. The second was Sunday's RuneQuest Glorantha session, where I play the role of a sapient duck on a flat earth, which is about as high fantasy as one can get. I really quite like the disposition of Glorantha ducks. They seem comical but are grim warriors against undead hordes, cursed with flightnessess by the Sun God, and incurably miserable fatalists as a result. To err is Human, to be blamed is Duck is one of their stock cultural phrases. Finally, I tried out last night some fake roast duck (faux canard, as my prurient humour would suggest) in a meal which was very successful, the texture and flavour being quite close to the real thing. Mac The Cat was quite interested as well, and fortunately, we have some (real) duck liver treats on-hand so he didn't miss out.
The early portion of yesterday left me wondering what the hell I was going to do for the coming week, which is hilarious in hindsight given my extensive "to do" list and the fact that I am working on multiple postgraduate degrees, books, journals, presentations, languages, etc. I've picked out about a dozen items from said list most of which will take around half a day to complete which also leaves my usual free time for my usual extracurricular activities. In recent days, I should also note, includes a submission to the Victorian ALP's administrators on party reform to prevent branch-stacking, a session write-up for my regular Eclipse Phase game, a piece on Linux utilities for image processing, specifically, Batch Image Processing, and finally, a review of Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius. The latter is dedicated to Richard Barker, on the first anniversary of his death, who was a particularly good example of Stoic philosophy himself. I am fortunate to have encountered such influences in my life.
It is not often that I have even the remotest excuse to make comment about ducks in my journal, but there have been three duck-related experiences in recent days so they can be combined into a single paragraph of anatidae recognition. The first was the discovery of a pair of ducks in the locally introduced wetlands, which was just built some eighteen months or so prior. Of course with the Yarra River being so close there such birds are common, but this is the first time some have made it thus far, which bodes well for the future. The second was Sunday's RuneQuest Glorantha session, where I play the role of a sapient duck on a flat earth, which is about as high fantasy as one can get. I really quite like the disposition of Glorantha ducks. They seem comical but are grim warriors against undead hordes, cursed with flightnessess by the Sun God, and incurably miserable fatalists as a result. To err is Human, to be blamed is Duck is one of their stock cultural phrases. Finally, I tried out last night some fake roast duck (faux canard, as my prurient humour would suggest) in a meal which was very successful, the texture and flavour being quite close to the real thing. Mac The Cat was quite interested as well, and fortunately, we have some (real) duck liver treats on-hand so he didn't miss out.
