Anyone want to caption this little otter?
[via The Daily Otter.]
Please feel free to use this thread to natter about anything your heart desires, except anything to do with the election — poll chat should go to the other open thread.
Is there anything great happening in your life? Anything you want to get off your chest? Reading a good book (or a bad one)? Anything in the news that you’d like to discuss? What have you created lately? Commiserations, felicitations, temptations, contemplations, speculations?
Categories: Life
Soggy here, innit? 
In memoriam: Diana Rigg 
Getting out the ‘yes’ 
100 books by women in 2016 
Hoyden About Town 
In virtual politics news, we just lost a game of Civ IV. Civ V is out in a few weeks and looks like a markedly different game, but I don’t know if we will have the computing/graphics power to run it. I like PC games better than console games, but the cost of keeping a PC in the house up-to-spec for gaming is above and beyond.
It’s been a really really bad week in ways that I can’t really talk about in detail. But I am out of bed after my second round of nasty respiratory junk and ceaseless exhausting coughing in a couple of weeks, so hopefully we can have a few dealling with chores days and at least be on top of routine stuff for the first time in a while. People keep asking me how I am going with child-proofing and introducing food and such, and it’s really really hard to stay on top of current stuff, let alone having the baby add new chores every day.
I want to caption that otter with something from a Shakespeare monologue, but I can’t remember anything appropriate… 😦
Freya:
Or, more simply,
“What you mean I’m not lolcat?”
About three weeks ago I decided to try and use the dryer less. Little did I know that in the ensuing three weeks it would rain for at least four days of every week. My resolve is slipping. /first world problems
@ Mary I hope your lurgy departs soon. ((((hugs))))
@Mary, the lurgy sounds most unpleasant and definitely in need of an eviction notice.
I’ve had a lovely family day for my parents’ Golden wedding anniversary – we drove up to the Lower Blue Mountains for one of those perfect crisp sunny winter days, gave them their big family present (new LCD TV, which we kids had decided they really should have, and happily discovered they had been lusting after and trying to budget for, so hugely successful choice). Then we went out for lunch to a very nice local restaurant that was just that little bit special (much more posh than we usually go to as the extended family) and had a spectacular meal.
Then we went back to my brother’s place for champers, cake and chat. I won’t need any dinner 🙂
I have 18 days left till my youngest is in public school from 8:30 am to 4:00 pm – wooo hooo! I stay at home with the kids and the three of us are totally stir-crazy.
I’m upset about what’s happening with the Seattle school district. The school superintendent and board are moving toward an increase in standardized testing AND tying it to teacher evaluations, meaning that teachers could be fired based on how their students do on a standardized test (which, BTW, was purchased in a no-bid contract, and, BTW, the school superintendent sits on the board of the company, and, BTW, even the company says that student scores shouldn’t be used to evaluate teachers). The union is in contract negotiations, and I hope they’ll have the clout to stop this move. I’d support them if they went on strike, even though I’ve been waiting for this moment of the kids going back to school for seven years.
@Kristin, I hate the trend everywhere towards more standardised testing and then tying it to performance pay for teachers. It seems like a recipe where schools with poorer socioeconomic demographics are just going to hit twice – they will do their best for students who are disadvantaged and will not get the best result because of those disadvantages outside the school, and then the teachers will be paid less because those results aren’t so good. How many teachers are going to take the pay hit to work in disadvantaged areas for any time where they don’t absolutely have to? – the queueing and manoeuvring for jobs in privileged areas will become grotesque.
In other news, I find this Rolling Stone cover pic of True Blood’s Eric, Sookie and Bill rather disturbing.
One for the Classics nerds: Homer’s Account of My Trip to Greece
The otter is clearly saying “Hey you! Get over here pronto! These grapes won’t peel themselves, you know!”
Hoyden’s at TAMOz?
I am not sure if any Hoydens in Sydney or elsewhere in Australia are going to TAMOz in November, but if you are, let me know as my partner and I are coming over and Hoydenish pub visit or something would be fun.
Grendel, I haven’t quite got my head around TAMOz yet, but thanks for the reminder! We’ll definitely have to organise a grogblogmeet.
Methinks we have a Poe over on an LP global warming thread. Surely any appeal to a “First Law of Physics” can’t be meant seriously?