Just spotted on Zooborns: these Asian small-clawed river otter twins, born at Seaworld San Diego.
Please feel free to use this thread to natter about anything your heart desires. Is there anything great happening in your life? Anything you want to get off your chest? Reading a great book? Anything in the news that you’d like to discuss? Commiserations, felicitations, temptations, contemplations, speculations?
Categories: arts & entertainment, fun & hobbies, Life
100 books by women in 2016 
Vale David Bowie 
Jurassic World – Movie Review 
#AWW Book Review: Mateship with Birds 
Hoyden About Town 
Every Otter Day I remind myself I need to upload my otter pictures, and then I forget.
Crunch time in school for me! I know we’re on a different schedule than y’all in Australia. Last day of classes this term is April 7, and my last exam is April 21, and I need to defend the not-a-thesis sometime before May 15 so I can apply to Grad School on time. *hides under table*
Good luck with the exams and grad school stuff then, Anna.
I’m feeling in the comfortable position of having enough books to read. It’s amazing what that can do for a person’s peace of mind.
Even though I know they would try to eat my face, I want to snorgle those cute little otters!
I am tired tired tired. Not enough spoons at all. I am trying to limit my sleep to 9 hours so I don’t over sleep…so I can actually go to bed at night. Everything is just so hurt-y that it is exhausting, even w/ my ankle feeling better.
However, I just got good news that a friend of mine has gotten the results for her most recent round of testing, including bone marrow biopsy and blood work, and she has finally beaten the t-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma she has been fighting for two years. She has been given a mostly clean bill of health (although she still has to do breathing treatments for a while).
For some reason it is really cathartic to spill all of that right now. Thanks!
Happy Otterday!
OuyangDan’s last blog post..Some Good News
OuyangDan: Beating lymphoma = teh awesome, but I’m sorry you’re feeling so awful. And Anna, good luck and Maude-speed!
Does anyone located in Sydney want a free bar fridge? It’s been sitting in my garage for the last four years, but I plugged it in for a short time today and it still seems to work — the unit felt distinctly chilly after only fifteen minutes (it comes with no guarantees, however). It needs a bit of a clean, and it’s not frost-free, so it needs de-frosting every couple of months (or alternatively, you can let the freezer turn into a big block of ice, like I did many years ago), and you’d need to arrange to pick it up yourself, but it’d probably be quite good for a student or someone who is just setting out on their own and can’t afford much in the way of whitegoods.
I was planning to put it up on Freecycle, but I thought I’d see if anyone here has a need for it first.
Just saw this lovely otter on LJ community urban_nature – it lives in the “lake” at a Florida apartment building.
Beppie: Hoydencycling! I like it.
Great campaign -support a girl & save the world
http://www.girleffect.org
The school in Mooroopna that did not act on reports of a girl being sexually abused by her step-father (she later killed him but will not be tried for murder, hooray!) is now being investigated by police.
I’ve decided vermicomposting would be a great way to compost during the cold season, rather than wait for my trough to thaw out so I can throw stuff in it. Wish I’d thought about it sooner.
Recognition for a fantastic horse trainer and driver – in a field that is very heavily male dominated
http://www.harness.org.au/news-article.cfm?news_id=11559
Interesting thing in harness racing is that it is very family dominated, when a lot of the old stalwarts ended up having daughters there was a natural progression to being more supportive of women actually “gasp” competing in the races and being trainers.
She came second last night her last race with her special horse Blacks a Fake but it was an outstanding Australasian sporting achievement . If they were at the Olympics there would be a swag of gold medals around his neck.
yesterday was my little sister Sommer’s birthday… maybe she’s not so little any more (she’s married and has a beautiful baby born last year)… but I still remember when she was younger, her cheeky grin, and always wanting to be involved in what the “big kids” were doing… Sommer certainly loved birthdays, especially the cake!
unfortunately she lives overseas now, so I don’t get to see her as regularly… I spoke with her yesterday, and she still sounds excited about birthdays as she did when she was younger…
It’s decided, delightfully, even after the Equinox, to chuck it down several cm of snow here. I have no desire to remove it or to deal with it at all.
Arrghghgh. “I must have this by 10.30am tomorrow at the latest!” What, this thing that I send you a month ago? Situation normal.
If we’re hoydencycling, I have a couple of boxes of kids books, if anyone wants (in Melbourne) – my parental units are moving house, and have returned all the boxes of crap they’ve kindly stored for me for the past 15 or so years, and I’ve gone through and the ones I’m sentimental about I’ll keep but I’d love for someone else to enjoy the rest (with particular reference to kids who love ponies, I think there are quite a few pony books in the mix).
Thought you might be interested in this article on Conroy’s alleged walkback of the censorship stuff:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/articles/2009/04/01/1238261622790.html
fp, I was tweeting Insight last night.
First Conroy said it would only be RC material blocked, and that they’ve “never advocated” anything else. Then he said “almost exclusively RC”, then the Classification Board guy said that RC is only the most abhorrent content that no reasonable person would ever condone, then it was clarified that RC includes “fetish” material like spanking and body piercing and golden showers, then the anti-abortion site was discussed, then… the whole argument devolved into a mess. The host repeatedly tried to push Conroy on his “almost exclusively RC”, and he dodged each time, with his neck getting redder and his voice more huffy.
The second time he escaped the question about the government’s blocking criteria with “This is why we’re having a trial”, which makes no sense at all. At least he only said “Russian Mob” and “Conundrum” once or twice.
He opened with his current favourite lie, that “this has all been in place for nine years and nobody has complained yet”.
The Australian Christian Lobby guy lied bald-facedly, saying that during the show people in the room had expressed opinions like “viewing child pornography and bestiality is perfectly safe for children”.
One of the better contributions was from a young adult woman who had survived anorexia nervosa. She talked about her conflicting feelings about “pro-ana” sites. One the one hand she finds them repugnant now, and on the other, at the time of her illness she found a sense of community there, a connection missing in her everyday life, and I got the impression that in some ways it was the only thing that kept her alive and engaged. Of all the pro-filtering or partly pro-filtering views expressed, hers was the most nuanced and interesting.
The others included a 14 year old daughter of a single dad who was paraded around by him telling us that her internet use was “out of control”. That was horrible and exploitative, I didn’t like it at all. The father’s main concern seemed to be spam, which of course won’t be affected at all by web filtering.
The anti-censorship advocates were the usual suspects (and I mean that in the nicest possible way!), they spoke well but were given not nearly enough time to elaborate to such a tech-ignorant audience. Oh, and the guy from the Maroochydore Boarding Kennels which was on the leaked list.
Conroy’s buzzphrase: “I’m a huge supporter of the civil society, and the internet is the Wild West at the moment.”
Transcript and video is now available at the Insight site.