The Demon of Unrest had been on my to-read list for a while, and the end of October/Start of November 2024 suddenly felt like the right time to read about Lincoln's election and inheritance of a divided America, and how the American Civil War broke out.

I am not implying that there are specific parallels to be drawn between 1860 and today, none that I want to explore. It was an interesting time in history, written about in an engaging and well structured way by Erik Larson.

While much of the book's material was sourced from Lincoln's papers and from the records of those facing the cannons on either side of the water of Charleston Harbour, the era was enriched further by excerpts from the diaries of "normal" people such as Mary Boykin Chesnut. And just like I did in 2020 during the Churchill book I found myself feeling like I should put more effort into my own diary journal in case Erik Larson or some future GPT version of him needed some source material for some book about events in 2025. But what significant world event would I need to add my observations on? And how was anything I wrote in Adelaide going to have relevance to that event? It would take some kind of major, global history making thing to happen for me to have any relevance.

Hmmm…

The dictionary definition of a "bay" is "a broad inlet of the sea where the land curves inwards". But Watsons Bay, as a Sydney locality, is kind of the inverse. A head on the eastern suburbs like a broad outlet of land where the sea curves outwards.

On a holiday, this means...

Sunrise by the Sea.

Breakfast by the Sea.

Birds by the Sea.

Trees by the Sea.

Paddleboarding by the Sea.

Post Paddleboarding Beer by the Sea.

Naps by the Sea.

Walking by the Sea.

Sculptures by the Sea.

Sunset by the Sea.

Basically, the Sea by the Sea

I'm mostly responsible when it comes to sunscreen, but my legs tend to be neglected probably more than they should. It's a combination of their surface area, the hairiness, plus the effort of bending down. But, expecting a decent amount of outdoor activity today I creamed up both legs. It immediately commenced raining, was cloudy the entire day, and the UV peaked at 4.

We started our morning with a walk to Lady Bay and to the lighthouse, then back for buffet breakfast and I ate three types of pastries. Then another walk around the South Head cliffs and another coffee before taking the ferry to Manly.

The rain drizzled for most of the following hours, but it didn't stop us from strolling up the Corso, along the water to Shelly Beach, to some rainforests and great views along the North Head walking trails and across more sand in the rain.

After all that walking we had lunch at a Lebanese restaurant by the water and the Lamb Shawarma came with five mini pitas. So I effectively ate four yiros. Then I had a beer at Felons before we rode the ferry back for some long awaited shoe removal.

Note to self: Add feature to include daily step count on journal entries.

I carried Nash downstairs for her pre- sleeptime toilet, set her down and let her out the back door into the garden.

The disturbance of a dog reaching the lawn triggered a loud bash followed by flapping wings. The mulberries have been ripening the last few weeks, so birds are feasting constantly. But this noise was too big to be a bird. Even Nash could tell; she stared up from the grass, half aggression half fear.

Up into the starlight we both watched a bat as it flew up into the Halloween night.

Twenty years on, now it is Nash who conjures an entry on a journal-less day with one animal encounter on the way from toilet to the bed.

I spent more time than I wanted to today trying to configure a TLS listener for a queue manager on a remote MQ server. This was in part because I had to teach myself some concepts around Docker and IBM along the way. I got there in the end, and my listener presented its certificate.

When I went to cook dinner I found I'd momentarily forgotten the ratio of water to rice to use when cooking basmati following the absorption method.