down under citycams
Hey guys, I have a new Australia-based obsession! Webcams. And kind of more broadly, weather.
Shobhit and I have both already added all three Australian cities we'll be visiting to our Weather app on our iPhones: Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide. The apparent trend currently is very much a double-edged sword: Sydney and Melbourne in particular keep showing either rain or thunderstorms in their 10-day forecasts, which of course does not exactly bode well for Shobhit's express desire to visit at least one beach in each city, and at least two beaches in Sydney (and nude beaches, where possible; and I have found two in Sydney). On the other hand, of course, any "disappointment" in such weather for our vacation is totally meaningless in the face of a country that has been on fire for months and desperately needs all this rain. That said, it sure would be nifty if we got sun breaks for the duration of our visit, but we'll see.
Anyway, the other thing: webcams. I can't stop checking to see not just what the weather conditions are, but how it actually looks, in each city. I have three such tabs open at all times in my Microsoft Edge browser now, which it finally occurred to me to do after countless times taking to Google to search for them. The vantage point of the webcam for Sydney is by far the best: it shows the skyline, the Sydney Opera House, and the Harbour Bridge—every iconic element of downtown Sydney, with the possible exception of Sydney Tower (their answer to the Space Needle), which is largely obscured by other buildings from this angle.
The best live webcam I could find for Melbourne appears to be mounted atop a skyscraper, which is generally my jam, except it is disappointingly aimed at the city sprawling away from downtown, rather than at the rest of the skyline. So, you can't really see much in the way of other skyscrapers in what is Australia's largest skyline.
The most useful webcam I could find for Adelaide is kind of curious, in a couple respects. Adelaide has high-rises, but not many, and none particularly tall: only three buildings there currently exceed 430 ft, two of them under construction, the taller of them 443 feet. That is very near the same average height of 440 ft (around 40 floors) that roughly twenty towers have recently been or will soon have been constructed in Seattle. That said, even with a lot of shorter high-rise buildings, the Adelaide skyline is surprisingly expansive, and I eagerly look forward to getting my own photos of it, especially from the Adelaide Oval RoofClimb that I'll be doing. Anyway, the Adelaide webcam I now regularly check is situated right in the center of the Central Business District, overlooking its locally famous Victoria Square, and thus does not show any genuine skyscrapers to speak of at all, let alone the three that now stand out in that particular skyline. It does, however, self-refresh every few seconds (as opposed to being a live video feed, like the other two).
In all three cases, once the sun comes up, I can see what the weather looks like using these webcams. And of course I do so multiple times each day.
My previous 24 hours have been relatively uneventful. I walked home, and did so in unusually good time, because it was in the low forties and very wet—only slightly drizzly, but still very wet—which made me fucking cold. So I picked up the pace just to get my heart rate going and warm myself up, which I must say, takes a hell of a long time when walking on level land. I did not get a genuinely increased heart rate until I booked up the steep hill on Pine Street once I turned left there at Pike Place Market. Then it was largely flat again until hitting Capitol Hill at around 9th Avenue, so it was a challenge warming myself up even at the increased pace for slightly more than half the walk.
I immediately changed into a T-shirt and my flannel pajama pants. Shobhit, who had had the day off of work but never bothered to do this earlier in the day, wanted me to go with him to the library. Ugh! I had no interest in going out again, especially after changing into clothes way more comfortable but which I did not want to go out in, so Shobhit changed his mind and decided he would pick up his book on his way home from work today. He baked some Brazi Bites for us to have with tomato soup for dinner, and I had a pretty small helping.
Tired of not getting better results thus far, I made a new decision regarding my food consumption. All those "small-ish" food containers for lunches which I have long regarded as single-serving containers? Now they're two-serving containers. The leftovers I took to work for lunch yesterday—I only ate half of them; I had the second half for lunch today. Portion control! This was the phrase I used constantly when I lost over 30 lbs around 2010, and its effectiveness is no different today (although aging a decade does still make it more of a challenge). Shobhit is the king of eating little to nothing all day, thinking that will make the difference, and then having three or four helpings of something at night. This has done nothing to lower his weight, and having massive volumes of food available does me no favors either. I'm doing better at the self-control lately, at least, and cutting my meal portions in half has had an immediate effect, with my weight finally back down to 153 lbs even as of this morning. I'd love to be down to 140 by the time we leave for Australia, but would be happy with 145. I've already gotten back to being able to look at myself naked in the mirror and think I look pretty good as it is, so there's that too.
We watched maybe four episodes of the 11th and final season of Cheers on Netflix while we ate. Then I retired to the bedroom so Shobhit could finish watching a Twilight movie on cable, which I had zero interest in. I finished watching a Jim Jeffries Netflix comedy special on my iPad instead.
[posted 12:39 pm]