Today’s baby otters learning to swim come to you via Zooborns. Click through to Zooborns for photos, or through to Youtube for a text explanation of the video.
While some people in the U.S.A. apparently celebrate “Boss’s Day” on the 16th of October (seriously, people?), it is also World Food Day: this year’s theme is “United Against Hunger”. Also on this day Marie Antoinette was guillotined, Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood, the Warsaw Ghetto was established, supply was blocked for the Whitlam government, Desmond Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and the last known naturally occurring smallpox infection took hold in a two year old girl in Bangladesh.
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 don’t think anyone here actually celebrates boss’s day. As far as I’m aware, it’s purely a Hallmark ploy that everyone ignores. I only even heard about it this year because it happens to fall on a Saturday and people have commented on the poor timing.
In other important news: Dang, those are some cute otters. I love the little one at the beginning all, “MOOOOM! I don’t want to!”
We took the kids to visit my 99 year old Grandma this morning. She’s been very ill and I wasn’t sure we were going to get this chance to have the whole family go and see her again so it was wonderful that she was well enough today. She was just about to start on the SMH crossword when we arrived, we talked about what it was like for her growing up as the 5th of eight children and I got photos of her with all the kids. Couldn’t stay long though as she gets tired very easily, she was nodding off after we’d been there for about 45 minutes.
I had an another awkward feminist in the classroom moment – I managed to start an argument by pointing out that a writer used ‘he’ to refer to the general reader/person. Which is unfair because as a man of course he would write from the male perspective! And he probably wasn’t even thinking about gender! And we’re only genderising this text because we’re studying it in a class with ‘gender’ in the title!
There is an *owl* in my *garden*
omg. Is it wearing a hat??
(sorry, I couldn’t resist).
My week was pretty horrific, capped off by the Most Unpleasant Woman Ever, dragging my name through the mud at work, but it improved (also, she declared she’d never set foot in our shop again)! Saturday and Sunday have been excellent so far, going out for lunch yesterday, buying a beautiful blue dress (on sale!). And then today with a very indulgent sleep in, and about to eat lunch.
Back home.
Jetlagged.
Forgotten how much I hate jetlag.
Watching an excellent UK police procedural/mystery on cable (13th Street). It’s called Bloodlines, and will no doubt be shown again during this week. Fantastic cast, it’s less than an hour in and I’m already well hooked.
Just saw this link tweeted by @lucytartan – a man who bought a tree farm just so he could provide a refuge for rescued homeless cats. Prepare to be awwwwed.
The only weekend of the year I have to work, and it snowed. In October. First time ever. Previous years we have had temps in the 30’s. But despite the snow and mud it was good fun.
It actually snowed? I bet the kids were a lot more thrilled than you were 🙂
We were very surprised by the brisk air as we exited the airport. And by having to put the heater on at home.
Roast Beef, my cat, won a cat-photo competition and now I have money money money! Finally he’s pulling his weight in this household! I’m thinking about charging him rent.
Carrie Fisher is guesting on Good News Week OMG OMG OMG
I was just surfing past, and normally have kinda given up on GNW quite a while back, but Carrie Fisher OMG OMG OMG
P.S. congrats to Roast Beef, and I plan on explaining his achievements in detail to Queen Molly in short order
One of my cats looks a little like the Wh*skas cat. I think that is probably the closest we are going to get. At least it keeps the kids amused. Well done Roast Beef. Is he enjoying some of his namesake?
I have to tell the internet somewhere about my glee over the first ep of Sherlock, so this thread it is.
@Kirstente, I just struggled through Italo Calvino’s If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller, and it drove me to rage first with the second-person “you” character (all eleven of them) being male, and then with the constant theme of “yay objectification, harassment and rape!” all the way through. I was suckered by the charming, charming first chapter.
I thoroughly enjoyed Sherlock too.
My son has just informed me that he only just realised that he left his laptop on the bus. I’m too appalled to even properly process this. It had half my photos on it from the holiday that I hadn’t transferred to this desktop yet, for a start.
i’m about to go and change every password on every online account I own.
(Update October 20th: we recovered the laptop, as recounted in the laptop thread)
Oh no. I don’t think I can quite process that either 😦 I’m getting ill and shuddery thinking about it.
Noticed two articles about otters in the news today
http://topnews.co.uk/214891-otters-return-england-s-rivers and
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-11583159 (I cannot for he life of me work out how to make links while using ipad, sorry)
Also in yesterday’s Herald Sun, there were three lovely children who raised the money to save a horse who had skin cancer and needed surgery – the ten year old boy who donated all the money he’d saved for a bike, even though he didn’t like horse riding, because he said he could wait longer for his bike but the horse couldn’t wait longer for the vet because he might have died – made me go ‘awwww’ and also think bugger all the people who think kids of today are no good etc.
OMG THE MOST ADORABLE SQUEE-RIFFIC POST EVER
Ponies!! Donkeys!!!! Old bikes !!!! Loveable dogs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Almost too much all at once.
http://horseandman.com/horse-stories/fuzzy-applenappers-i-have-an-infestation-under-my-tree/
*Dies*
Oh Helen, that is awesomely squee-riffic.
@ Rebekka I hope today there is a story about a Bike Shop owner who gives that little boy a bike because lovely actions like that should be rewarded.
@Mindy, I was thinking that too, and also that the bike shop wouldn’t exactly lose out, as they could potentially get another article about it in the Hun if they went about it the right way.
Im having a moment of Major DeLurk [hence my 2 other posts here tonight].
Hi.
Thank you Helen for the fuzzy applenappers link – as you say, *full* of squee 🙂
One of my Breaking News stories this week is that I temporarily entered the world of “Things That Define Me” and bought myself a new phone. This was a Big Deal [so Big that I just cant stop Capitalising Everything]. The last phone I bought myself cost about $50, maybe 10 years ago. Ive been using a Nokia hand-me-down for the last maybe 5 or 6 years, quite happily, but, well, it was time for a bit of Bling For Me if ya know what I mean.
So, after about a month of research which involved looking at phones on the interwebs, reading reviews of phones on the interwebs, asking people what they had & what worked & didnt etc, coming to the conclusion that Iphones are for [redacted by mod] people who arent up to this kind of data mining/information gathering type of work, tossing up between Symbian and Android, working out exchange rates, reaffirming my long held vow of never ever giving Tel$tra any more of my business than I have to …….. well now I have a phone & its my Latest Favourite Thing. It can do everything. It can do more than my laptop. It can do more than all of the 17 sentient beings in our household (Im not counting the fish, sorry) put together.
Ok, maybe thats a bit far-fetched. It cant lay eggs.
Speaking of eggs, our pair of ducks (Elizabeth Bennett & Mr Darcy) finally after 3 failed attempts, hatched 3 ducklings. One died straight away. So then there were 2 very amazingly beautiful ducklings, 1 yellow and 1 brown. Full of awesome.
Within 24 hours of Elizabeth and Darcy leaving the nest, the brown one wasnt walking, and the yellow one was limping.
Backyard diagnosis: brown one – both legs broken above the knee joint. Yellow one – left leg either broken or sprained above the ankle joint.
Rehomed into a dog-tainer in my bedroom, splinted with gauze, fed and pampered 4 hourly for the next 48 hrs, until it became obvious that the brown ones injuries were pretty much fatal – splintered bone protruding through the skin above the knee.
Crap.
So I did the thing you dont want to do, and euthanased a baby duck.
Unfortunately the next day while I was out the yellow one suffered the same fate – not me this time but some combination of the doggy and/or catty members of the household – I was wrong about the dogtainer being impenetrable.
Moral of the story – Elizabeths eggs will probably be given forthwith to one of the more reliably maternal chooks, coz Ive never had a chook crush its offspring to the point of legs breaking.
*sigh*
akk.
thingyhijacked my post!Wheres the edit button?
lol
@Jennifairy, I sorted out the <del> tags (you’d put the closer where the opener should be).
We used to have an edit button for comments, but then the plugin died.
Jennifairy – I don’t think there is one. I don’t know about everyone else, but I always read
crossed throughtext. Because I really want to know what people are saying 😛I read two articles about two amazing women (who unfortunately are now deceased) today.
Claire Rayner, a sane voice about sexual education and advice. The comments on this story by her son are so lovely.
and
“Annie” or Gloria Wasserman who did so much for her family and others, and apparently had a really great time doing it.
Thank you for that – I knew what I’d done as soon as I saw it, but by then it was too late!
Also, apologies to Iphone users. Ive spent a bit of the week trying to explain to other prospective phone upgraders just how my new phone is better than the Iphone, in fact there are now at least half a dozen smart phones on the market that give it more than a run for the money – but love is blind, as they say.
Diversity is a wonderful thing 🙂
Thanks for the links Julie – I love what Claire had to say about the sexual revolution and central heating 🙂