Today’s sea otters come to you via The Sun. They were photographed in Alaska’s Prince William Sound.
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 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 
I hope all of our (collective) friends and family in the South Island of NZ are okay. 7.4 earthquake there last night. Today show this morning said they didn’t know if any Aussies had been injured. “You can’t be parochial about New Zealand” I cried “it’s New Zealand.” Actually the whole ‘it’s not a disaster or newsworthy unless an Australian is involved’ really bothers me. Whoever it is involved they are still people.
There’s been a huge earthquake in Christchurch, in New Zealand. 7.1 on the Richter scale, several older buildings have collapsed, others are damaged. No deaths, and only two people seriously injured. The twitter hashtag is #eqnz, and if you’re looking for bloggy discussion of it, try Busytown: The Shakes.
There are news reports of the earthquake on the NZ Herald site: link. I haven’t linked to a specific story, because the page is being updated constantly. The other major newspaper site – http://www.stuff.co.nz – also has stories, but it’s taking longer to load.
Danm! HTML stuff-up… sorry.
@Deborah – html fixed!
Sounds like lots of people in Christchurch had a lucky escape – I hope the two injured make a full recovery.
Now, in important news that is all about me: 3 large hot lemon and honey drinks last night, and two more this morning, and I’m almost not tasting my catarrh that has been plaguing me so that I don’t even have an appetite.
I hope Mary is feeling better than last week.
Happy Otterday.
We are now in the stage of illness where we are really struggling to get on top of the sleep deprivation. So far terrible grouch attacks have been kept under control but the long range forecast isn’t good unless we can get more than 2 hours of sleep at a time soon.
Also, I finished my antibiotics course and my letdown has sprayed the baby in the eyes several times today. Coincidence? … well, it’s hard to say. The ABA was sceptical of antibiotics being an intrinsic problem. That said, if I can just stay off antibiotics for some months now until solids take over as the main part of his diet we will never have to care again.
Hope you are improving today tigtog. Judging from word on the street, many people in Sydney have had gastro and/or a nasty cold this month. Very hard on people who are disabled or ill already of course. C’mon spring.
I hope everyone in Christchurch is okay and Mindy I agree the whole “let’s lead disaster stories with the number of [insert nation here]ians injured/killed/etc.” is something that bothers me a lot.
I am a giant pile of cranky at the moment, as I’ve stopped smoking in preparation for surgery next Friday. Poor Stephen is copping a lot of me ranting in capslock about things that wouldn’t normally bother me that much.
Of course my mood is unhelped by the fact that it is downright MISERABLE weather here in Canberra, and the mother in law was taunting me this afternoon with Brisbane’s 28-degree day. :C I do hope folks in Brisbane have a fun time at Riverfire this evening; I’m always sad to miss it, though it won’t be the same without the F1-11 dump and burn.
We did manage to do a lot of cleaning today, as I have friends arriving from Brisbane this evening for just under a week, and were successful in the purchase of an air-mattress to convert the library/tv room into a make-shift spare room. I can’t wait to move and have a proper guest room.
Also: Those otters are utterly adorable and assisted in improving my mood. o/
My love to our friends and neighbours in NZ. I have a lot of love and affection for NZ, so I’m thinking of them and hope things get sorted out quickly over there.
My big brother is having his 40th birthday this weekend. The fambly will be over to celebrate, and my fella will be over to hang. A little nervous (me, though he is probably too). It’ll be nice to see so much of him this weekend, at any rate.
And I’m just a little bit excited about Freo winning the football today. 🙂
@Mary Lots of love. Hope the hard bit ends soon.
Didn’t know how bad the NZ earthquake was until I saw the news. On the radio they said no one was hurt, but the buildings were all over the road. Confronting stuff.
Unfortunately it was raining all day so I had to stay inside drinking hot chocolate and watching TV all afternoon. Quelle horreur. D:
(Assignments are soluble so there’s no way I could take the risk of doing them on a wet day.)
Hey people, not sockpuppeting here but I haven’t had much at all to do with things ‘fuckpoliteness’ of late…
Glad to hear (almost) everyone was okay in NZ, though the time and money it will take to get things back to normal only really dawned on me today.
Mary – I’m sorry to hear things continue to be hard. I have assignments to do right now, but I’d be happy at some point to take the little one to the library or out for a stroll so you could grab some sleep, or just stare at the wall and enjoy some silence!
@ Jennifer, I’m pining for a proper spare room too. TBO and I are in talks about sitting down with a mortgage broker and all of the stuff that entails. It’s big grown up scary stuff…exciting too though which means I have not done as much work on my essay as I should have.
@tigtog – ugh, I had something similar for two full weeks. I had dismissed it as ‘just a cold’ but my lord, the number of boxes of tissues I went through. Finally coming out the other side of it now.
@napalmnacey, hope the intros and hanging out go well! 🙂
@T.A.K – yeah, I needed a good excuse as to why I did nothing much at all to advance my essay yesterday and had forgotten about the rain!
I slept in having been kept awake half the night with hooligan neighbours on Fri eveneing. I googled houses and dreamed about house plans broached financial agreement issues and spent the arvo baking (with TBO) a perfect roast chook, and whipping up a salad with goats cheese and almonds, followed by strawberry and rhubarb crumble for a father’s day eve dinner – TBO really is one of those dads you want to make a fuss over.
Hope all our Victorian friends are OK and have escaped the worst of the floods.
I wonder who’s going to get hit with the hail of frogs.
(also *waves* at doubleantandre/FP)
*Waves back*. WOW! I’ve only just seen those photos now. Hope everyone’s okay.
Those buildings all over the road in NZ – they’re the older brick buildings. None of the modern buildings, built to strict earthquake standards, have come down. The great majority of buildings in the city are standing, and many are undamaged. Still, there are plenty of houses which have new skylights where brick chimneys have come through the roof.
Yesterday in Christchurch was clear and sunny, but right now, a gale is howling in.
And I’m thinking of the people in Victoria too.
I continue my Chr*s Mu*r DBD watch. Yes, I know, it’s a sickness. Yes, I know it’s incomprehensible – there seems to be no logic to it or even grammar sometimes. But I notice Zed’s hair has gone grey overnight. Is this an attempt at verisimilitude given that Mu*r’s libertarian hipsters are all supposed to be in their mid 40s according to the back story, but all have the bodies and lingoes of Gen-Y? Enquiring mind wants to know.
Sorry – link!
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2010/09/03/
Gee thanks Helen, I now have branesprane because I just can’t stop myself trying to make sense of that panel.
I know, I did say it’s a sickness – although I count it as a kind of Zen exercise, the brane attempting to comprehend the incomprehensible.
Just finished watching the first season of Rome. Dammit they killed off two of my favourite characters. Of course, as hubby pointed out, it would have been difficult for Caesar to survive his own assassination but still. A good antidote to Spartacus. I just feel that they have Spartacus all wrong. Am also kicking myself for not buying True Blood 1&2 when a) it was on special and b) it was available. Also cranky because even though I cleaned the shower yesterday and the laundry which had been bothering me for weeks I’m not getting my usual lift out of having clean things.
Right. Now I’m going to focus on being grateful for not being sick, not going through nicotine withdrawal, not having a bloody great hole in the roof or indeed no roof at all, not having essays to write or potential new mortgages to worry about. I’ll be busy for a while over here getting over myself basically.
Ok, who watched Life last night and couldn’t stop squeeeing at the stoats?
Look at those bouncy little buggers, waiting for their back legs to catch up to them as they joyously fling themselves around the countryside, bounding across the flowering meadow on short little legs and oh my god it’s got a screaming rabbit by the throat and it’s an merciless agent of fluffy bunny death.
So I’m a bit undecided about stoats.
I loved the stoats! But I getcha re the merciless bunnykiller problem.
Weedy sea dragons are so much more tranquil.
Nah, I’m all go the stoats. Although rabbits probably aren’t a feral pest in the UK the way they are here. I have to rely on my cats to be merciless bunny killers and being woken up by rabbit screaming is not pleasant. Must train cats to keep bunnykilling outside (and bunny bodies).
As a dear friend of mine once said – if it’s feral it’s in peril.
Just by chance is anyone familiar with O’Hare airport in Chicago and shopping centres near there?
Hi Mindy,
I lived in Chicago abpout 10 years ago (OMG *that* long ago?!). Woodfield Mall is close:
http://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=O'Hare+Airport,+Chicago,+IL,+United+States&daddr=5+Woodfield+Mall,+Schaumburg,+IL+60173-5097,+United+States+(Woodfield+Mall+Shopping+Center)&hl=en&geocode=FaiCgAIdrazC-ilviXU7J7QPiDFfzGvsaNdB2Q%3BFdyugQIdLprA-iHML4Ejk2Ku6imHqkz9kK8PiDEfKQvEm_pv6g&gl=au&mra=ls&sll=42.05334,-88.040915&sspn=0.029284,0.040512&ie=UTF8&t=h&z=12
I am sure there are lots of other things around there now, too.
Ooh, Mindy, are you travelling?
I am clearly a little less suspicious than I should be.
Background: Fugitivus’s article about parental notification for abortion and who gets victimised and how by parental notification has been linked everywhere. I just came across a comment thread (I’m not going to link it) with USA-soft-left commenters largely, and the comments are all “well, parental consent for all other medical procedures on minors are required, and clearly that’s fine and reasonable, why are you saying abortion is all special huh?”
And thus it became clear to me that Tony Abbott’s push to raise the age of presumed medical competence and privacy for minors is probably mainly about being able to say “well, you have the right to find out about your sweet 15 year old girl’s ingrown toenail treatment, why don’t you have the right to find out about HER ABORTION!1!!!!!”
Yeah, fairly obvious I know. But I didn’t realise how well the argument played in the USA environment where many pro-choice people are desperate to compromise. We think abortion is just like any other procedure… so therefore it’s no big deal… so therefore we support parental notification too, because we support it for every other procedure. Hey! Check it out! Compromise! Compromise!
I support the existing medical privacy for minors for other reasons, but now also so that it doesn’t become a “well abortion isn’t that special, so we default to notification just like for every other procedure! oh you say abortion is special? perhaps we should ban it!” wedge.
@Mary, I’d missed that too, but a bit of googling shows that Leslie Cannold had his number on it back in June.
@ Rebekka
No, hubby is travelling for work and did have a stop over in Chicago, but his flight has been changed and he is now stuck in LA for five hours instead. I had hoped to get him to the summer sales to buy cheap kids summer clothes 😦
@ Wilice – thank you. If I ever get to travel to Chicago I will definitely go there. I just googled it and it looks great!
Mindy, bummer! Much more fun if you were going 🙂