This and that.

It's been an odd sort of summer. Mother Nature seems to have given up on the old twelve-month year thing and settled into a two-days cold, two-days warm cycle. Some of the plants around here have come into bloom three times this summer, thrown off by the odd weather. Right now it's hot again.

Hotter in Canberra, the town where I grew up. One person confirmed dead, two more in critical condition with burns, and a hundred homes destroyed - that's a lot for a town about the size of Sacramento. The fire situation in that part of the country is being described as "the most serious for 100 years".

Gave in to temptation yesterday - it's all Rey's fault, really - and bought rather more than I should have from Tin Soldier, though not as much as I wanted to. Today I painted up small fire and water elementals (though the water elemental really looks more like a water nymph), an owl, two ghouls and an orc.

Oh, and finished Chapter 10, although I'm not entirely happy with it - feels like it should be longer, and I don't know what to add. Will work on the remaining miscellany tomorrow (Glossary, acknowledgements, abstract.) There are a few minor things I need to fix in the results, and the rest will depend on comments from others. Getting close now.

Bloody hell.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/01/19/1042911262050.html

388 homes confirmed destroyed. Two people dead, several volunteer fire crews missing - trucks found burnt out. My parents no longer live in Canberra, but they still own the family house in which my brother and I grew up; our neighbour has been hosing down the roof, and has been warned to prepare for evacuation.

If you want irony:
"Capitals vs Fire in doubt due to bushfires."

Canberra hasn't lost a home to bushfires in fifty years. Four hundred houses, in a town with a population around 300 000, is amazing. While the weather's been erratic where I live, through most of Australia it's been one of the hottest and dryest summers in decades.

And every time you see somebody driving a big shiny SUV that hasn't been out of the city in months, you're looking at one of the arseholes who helped make this all possible.