Today’s thoughtful otter comes via motoshi ohmori on flickr.
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 
What a gorgeous photo. Those whiskers!
Had a great night out last night with a couple whose friendship is quite recent for us – she works with mr tog and when we went to her birthday party we discovered that she and I both grew up bushwalking etc and the fellas share a badass nerdlove for valve amplifiers. We went to a restaurant where the owner also has a badass nerdlove for valve amplifiers, a box of which were at one point strewn across the table between courses in order to be admired. Luckily the food was also super delicious.
I think we need more nights out like that. Sometimes just a very small group can really have a lot of fun.
Denmark had a general election on Thursday, and not only is the new prime minister a woman (Helle Thorning-Schmidt, leader of the Social Democrats) it looks likely the deputy prime minister is going to be a woman too (Margrethe Vestager, leader of the Liberal Democrats). In fact, of the four parties likely to make up the government, only one has a man as leader. (Villy Søvndal is leader of the Socialist People’s Party and Johanne Schmidt-Nielsen is leader of the Red-Green Alliance).
Danish conservatives are sh!tting themselves and are busy predicting the imminent collapse of (Danish) civilisation. Although in fairness I should point out that the leader of the Danish People’s Party is Pia Kjærsgaard, which makes her a bit of a Pauline Hanson equivalent in Danish politics.
Oops – Margrethe Vestager is leader of the Danish Social Liberal Party according to Wikipedia. (Danish political party names do not translate well).
Taken the kids to swimming lessons, gone to Floriade*, back home to the Farmers Market, an ill advised trip to K%C because I promised (always buyers remorse) and then dropped in on a car boot sale on the way home. $11 worth of books and magazines later (2 stacks of Gardening Australia @$1 ea, books 50c) and I’m feeling pretty good. This afternoon has the possibility of a snooze and enjoying the Ngaio Marsh I picked up at the car boot sale.
*Floriade seems to have less flowers and more gimmicky stuff every year. When I first started going there were flowers everywhere and a few food stalls, now it’s more like a big market with some lovely garden beds. I know it is expensive to run and I appreciate free entry but still some more flowers would be nice. Still the designers dressing mannequins with flowers and leaves of all different types looked interesting as I dragged the kids in one end and out the other on the way to the rides.
I have a week off from uni. I’ve found that every time I pop an essay in a lecturer’s inbox, I come away paranoid that I put it in the wrong chute!
Perla: I always liked the approach of the history department I briefly took classes in (first year only), which was that they were handed in to an office which issued a receipt. Much more unambiguous that you’d submitted it OK!
I’m hoping to shake my burning cough and related fatigue for a six-months-in-the-planning lunch tomorrow. My toddler is recovering (I hope!) from the same cold and is being such a grouch right now. Only crackers and indie music help. (His Dad watches rage with him every Saturday morning, and this morning it was all breakup songs. Which gives them a good excuse to not skip Gotye for a week.)
Mary, I was just going through some old threads and found this: https://hoydenabouttown.com/20101022.8862/friday-hoyden-ursula-k-le-guin/. Would you still like to read Four Ways? I’ll happily lend you my copy.
We watched Fido last night. So very, very twisted, I highly recommend it, for people who like Social justice, Zombies, Dodgy zombie eating with fake blood, and the sort of dark humour of Kick Ass when it comes to kids doing things that cause you to stop and wonder if you are a bad person for laughing.
**trigger warnings domestic violence, gun imagery**
Maybe a few days late but fark this is scary stuff! And of all the “people” having guns returned, how many are women, exactly?
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/guns-returned-in-domestic-violence-cases-20110918-1kg1y.html
Wow. LONG LONG WEEKS at the moment!
Very excited by the warm weather and the longer days! Bring on the spring holidays – I’ll actually get some time at home with TBO and the kids this holidays!
tigtog, that sounds like a fantastic night! TBO and I had a fantastic date a couple of weeks ago, bar hopping, Spice I Am for dinner and Margaret Cho at the Opera House. Yippee! Might be a while til the next one so I’ll have to live vicariously through your stories! 🙂
Aqua – that sounds pretty positive (in terms of the first two women anyway!).
@ Mindy – sounds like a good weekend! Hope you had the glorious weather we had (though most of mine was spent in an on campus session I still got to read in the sun in the lunch breaks).
@Mary – my first two assessments were due on the same day – I got them both in a day early and felt SOOOo great. I’d submitted them electronically and got my receipt so all was well. Until I got another email to say that I was ‘not enrolled as an external and would have to submit a hard copy at the relevant department office’ – two days after they were due!! Sorted but ARGH!
@Perla – WEEK OFF!! WOOT! I’m exhausted at the moment working hard to meet deadlines for on campus sessions and assessments. I have a week off of work, though I need to pull out a major assessment at the same time. All the same thank goodness lectures have stopped for two weeks!! Hope your toddler is better and you got to go to the lunch!
@YetAnotherMatt – haven’t heard of it but need to retreat to the ‘safety’ of Buffy atm – just finished first season of Dexter. Found that loved it but I would get so off my tree on adrenalin that I need a break for a week as I was feeling wired all night and all day.
@ Janet – I saw that. Yeah – ‘people’ huh. I guess they can use inclusive language when it suits them right?
Well. Must watch dvds while ironing then fall into bed. Glad to take a break from Dexter and not have it racing around and around in my head. Picked a few of the big story lines much to TBO’s delight. Such an emotionally intense show to watch – so much fear/revulsion/humour/pathos etc. I do love Dexter when he’s being a giant dork and pulling a surprised face after hitting someone in anger, or grinning goofily imagining himself to be greeted as a hero. Season 2 when my adrenalin levels are back to their usual level!
@ Mary and @ Perla – sorry about that. Seem to have copy/pasted some of the comment meant for Mary onto my comment to you Perla! Hoping Mary’s toddler is okay – sorry about that!
Big assignments. Group work issues. Depression issues. Looming unemployment issues! But… Tickets acquired for Eddie Izzard’s show! Tax return arrived just in time. I’m so excited!
@doubleantandre
The weather was glorious. I actually spent most of Sunday inside doing housework, but I don’t often get a wave of energy to do that much cleaning so I did it while I could. Then I took the kids out to lunch and the park so that they couldn’t mess the house up again. Getting loads of washing dry and taking it off the line while it still smelt of sunshine did wonders to get rid of the gloomy mood from Friday night. I really enjoy this little bit of the year where it is lovely and sunny and not too hot.
I hope the muse is good to everyone trying to get uni work done and dusted before the uni break.
For anyone following my “last name” issue – we had yet another talk about it, and a double barrel is now looking a little more likely. It came out that he’s mostly worried about his family resenting me – and he couldn’t handle it if the name decision made things difficult with his family. He’s talked about it with them before and they said he should do “whatever makes you happy” – it makes it sound like they don’t give a flying fig if I’m happy too, but whatevs, they’re his family. But I guess he didn’t believe it though because he’s still super anxious about it. At least we’ve made some progress, and we can talk to them about it at a later date.
Any rate, I’m a lot happier making a compromise if it means avoiding a crappy relationship with his family, rather than because he “just doesn’t like it” (which was sort of what he was saying before… it was all very confusing for me). But it does mean big talks about where the line is between making choices that make us happy and making choices that make them happy, and whose side he’ll be on if we ever do have an irreconcilable difference about something with them (especially parenting related). But hopefully (for me), they’ll be more ok than he realises. Yes, they’re fairly traditional and pretty closed minded about some things, but I also think they’ll understand where I’m coming from – and hopefully they’ll understand that it’s not that I don’t want my kids to have their name, it’s that I want them to have mine *as well* – which I think is extremely reasonable…
TL/DR – progress is being made with my partner and our issues agreeing on last name/s for our future children.
Good to hear you’re making progress, Alien Tea!
@doubleantandre @Mary:
I used to go to a uni with a central drop off/collection point + receipt system – It was so much easier than my current uni’s arrangement.
I have been very much enjoying my little break. Went up to the hills for op-shopping and second hand books with a friend. Came back with quite the haul!
@Alien Tea, good new about the progress. His family don’t sound like a great bunch, I have to say (maybe I’m just overjudging them because of some irritating shit to come out of mine lately).
I just had a birthday. Thai food’s really nice, and all Farscape are now belong to me.
Happy belated birthday SunlessNick. I like the sound of your celebration. 🙂
Yes, a happy birthday from me too!
Happy Birthday 🙂
Oh, and about his fam – they’re nice, just ignorant and don’t care to change… if you can call that nice. His mother is the main worry… she grew up in a small, racist country town and is fairly set in her ways. I suspect he is more concerned than he needs to be, though… they don’t seem that unreasonable to me! At least I hope so, ’cause if not, I suspect this will only be the first of many issues.
Happy Belated B’day Sunless Nick. Thai food is nice. Never gotten into Farscape, am I missing something?
Test comment!
OK, apparently HAT specifically does not want me to talk about Four Ways to Forgiveness: every single time I’ve tried to comment about it I get a 404, but every other comment I post goes through.
Here’s a short version of what I wanted to say: thanks Chally, I bought it and read it several times in the intervening period, and I like it very much.
Happy Birthday SunlessNick!
Mindy, yes, you are missing something. A friend of mine describes Farscape as the tale of one American man’s descent into Australian BDSM. I’ve been watching it with the kids 🙂
Happy birthday SunlessNick! I hope the celebrations brought a little bit of sunlight into your day 🙂
Farscape: don’t… don’t watch the movie.
Movie? What movie? La la la la la I can’t hear you!!!!
My twitter and facebook are being invaded by diet talk coming from people I really rather like. I do wish it wasn’t happening.
Thankyou for the birthday wishes.
Re Farscape, I even like the movie (assuming that’s referring to the Peacekeeper Wars and not something I haven’t heard of).
Happy Birthday SunlessNick!
Kim – Yaaay Eddie Izzard! And I hope the various issues sort themselves out.