Me and my beloved older sister, Neroli. Our birthdays are only three weeks apart in May/June, so my niece got us a joint birthday cake. Remarkably, she managed to transport it safely all the way from Auckland!
Damn it; I think I’ve just broken a tooth. All I was doing was eating a chocolate chip biscuit. Fortunately, the dentist can look at it tomorrow. 💰
Stop the world's first octopus farm
I can thoroughly recommend The Custard Pie in Paraparaumu, on the corner of Mazengarb Road and Realm Drive. As the name suggests, there is a good selection of custard pies and cream doughnuts. I had the boysenberry cream doughnut and Kate had the passionfruit custard doughnut. Both delicious.
Our friends Helen and John met us there and we went to their place for lunch; pizza and doughnuts — a perfect combination unless you can’t eat fat or cream (which would be very sad).
This Thursday! Happiness: Find the Joy Within public talk
4am Wednesday: I wake up to find everyone else in the bed pressed up against me, and me perched precariously on the edge of the bed. I can’t recall the last time I fell out of bed, and I don’t want it to be tonight!
Calm and peaceful mind
Wendell Berry on community
“A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other’s lives. It is the knowledge that people have of each other, their concern for each other, their trust in each other, the freedom with which they come and go among themselves.”
Wendell Berry (2012). The Long-Legged House, p.71, Counterpoint Press
Sigh. I’ve just spent ages messing around trying to get my formatting and syntax correct in a post on micro.blog using BBCode before I remembered that BBCode is for Friendica and we use Markdown on micro.blog.
What a drongo.
Australia's rooftop solar success
Amid Australia’s chaotic climate politics, the rooftop solar boom is an unlikely triumph.
It’s difficult to overstate how rapidly Australians have embraced solar power – there’s now more rooftop solar than coal-fired power. The key question is what policymakers can learn from its success.
I didn’t know this, and it looks like it might be a good example of how the right incentives at a household level can create the right outcomes. It reminds me of the home insulation subsidies paid in the 1970s. Lots of houses had insulation installed then.
Amid Australia’s chaotic climate politics, the rooftop solar boom is an unlikely triumph
Access to Botanical Gardens lost to many visitors
Taxi coincidences
I had to get a taxi up to Kenepuru Community Hospital today for a blood transfusion. The taxi arrived at home for the pick-up spot on the time I wanted and as we got to the hospital, the driver gave me his card and told me to ring him when I was finished and he would collect me. It wouldn’t more than 10 minutes for him to arrive. “Yeah right,” I thought.
I got out of the appointment and was standing at the drop-off and pick-up point wondering if I should ring him or just jump in one of the Porirua Taxis that were there when he turned up with a fare going to the hospital! No waiting was required and an instant fare for him. He was a happy man.
A new bullet journal
CW: Medical and cancer treatment, death
I have started a new bullet journal from this week.
Just been outside chatting to one of our neighbours. A 10-year girl who has had two spells in hospital in the past week with some mysterious virus. The new Te Wao Nui children’s hospital In Wellington is a great facility for children and their whānau but she’s had enough of being in there; thank you very much.
Updating OpenStreetMap
Morena world.
It’s dawned bright and clear again in Aotearoa today. Blue skies, no clouds and hardly any wind.
And we haven’t been caught out by the change to daylight saving this morning. Kate is off for her Sunday morning walk with her book club chums.
Hope your day is going well.
We’ve just been talking about how much exercise any of us do. Our daughter, who works in a department store, did over 15,000 steps today. I’ve done 651!
Solar savings
Now that I have added the power company tarrifs into our solar power web system, I am even more obsessed with tracking how much electricity we are producing and saving / selling back to Contact.
“Oh, look. We’ve sold them $0.52 of our power today.”
The app also tells us the CO2 reduction equivalent for various activities. So far we have saved the equivalent of 1,230 km of driving in the car. I don’t know how that is calculated, but I feel smug about it.