This week’s Open Thread is hosted by the new otter pups from Perth Zoo. With two litters of four Asian Small-clawed Otter pups born recently, Perth is overflowing with young otters. Here they are at their vet check.
[via Zooborns.]
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 
Visited the Right Wing Brother in Law’s place on Thursday night and he was proudly displaying a poorly written, cite-free Microsoft Word essay on asylum seekers and why accepting them is like feeding wildlife, i.e. a crude Social Darwinist anti-immigration screed. “I sent it to Quadrant but they didn’t accept it,” he said.
BWAHAHAHAHA. Too far right for Quadrant. (Actually not, but failing to veil the ghastly social darwinist, white supremacist views under suitably pseudo-academic obfuscations to appear respectable.)
Last night I went to see Bill Bailey live! It was amazing, and me and my housemate waited around afterwards and then got to meet him! I hugged Bill Bailey. My fangirl life is complete. (Also, I was so excited that the other people waiting told me I was adorable.)
Also, I was in Cleo talking about asexuality! Which I am mentioning again because I am obviously awesome and I commented in the wrong linkfest thread.
Hope everyone is having a lovely Saturday! I am now coming down from my high and spending all weekend writing an essay, which has not really been started yet.
Helen, did you almost explode from holding the BwaHaHaHa inside?
Jo, saw Bill Bailey a few years ago with the family – excellent show. As for the Cleo article – WOOT!
We have cygnets in Sydney Park again – sooooo cute.
Summer has arrived in Brisbane today, so if you don’t get too much from up here, it’s because we’re too hot.
Thanks, TT! The Bill Bailey show was great, I love how he’s an absolute nutter, but the most intelligent and articulate nutter I’ve ever heard.
Aqua, summer has indeed come today! I was hoping for a lovely big storm yesterday but I only got a smattering of rain in the south. Time to start getting up earlier so that I don’t die of heatstroke riding in to uni, urgh.
First I have to say, Back off Jo, Bill Bailey is mine. MINE!!
Re riding to work – yes. I’m what the horse people call a ‘re rider’, starting again after a long hiatus. I used to start in Yarraville, ride to Footscray station, hop on a train, get off at Flinders st and ride to my work at the edge of the city via Birrarung MArr.
Yesterday I managed the whole way there and back, which means negotiating the CBD *tremble* and some nasty bits along Footscray Road *shake, tremble*.
But it will be necessary to start EARLY this summer b/c an El Nino is comng and it’s going to be bloody hot!
Spent quite a bit of today being glad that MyNigel is happy for me to be supportive but not active in using the spray gun for painting the house. I move the drop cloths and saw horses, hold the cord, wipe off stray bits of paint and put the music on. He gets the backache and aching arms. Tomorrow we move onto painting window frames. I don’t think I will escape this easily tomorrow. The mind numbing boredom of taping up the windows first is made easier when there are two of you though.
I’ve been playing the PC rework of Final Fantasy VII (no, it’s still the same blocky graphics as the original Playstation – for $12 .au, you don’t get modern FMV quality graphics on a game from 1997), mainly for the nostalgia value and the enjoyment of a game I’ve been fond of for about fifteen years or so (and a sad Squeenix fangirl of for about the last half-dozen).
I’m sort of writing a review, and I’ll probably post it once I get the game finished (which isn’t going to be Any Time Soon – I have two lots of lab work for two different subjects at uni to get up to date with, not to mention a couple of different assignments as well).
Weather on the west coast at the moment is relatively cool and windy (the weather bureau are telling us it’s going to be a warm, wet spring for us, which will make a nice change, since we had a cold, dry winter). I’m just hoping the promised day of clear weather tomorrow will hold, because I’ve a week’s washing to get done, and I’d rather get it all dried on the line than trying to dry a load at a time on the clothes rack we have in our undercover area.
Absolutely beautiful in Adelaide today – 25 degrees and sunny. Went out and bought a BBQ and had my first bbq of the season. I then watched the Crows lose the footie. Does this make me a proper Australian now?
Obviously, Bill Bailey is mine.
Aaaand I was hoping that the image code would work in that comment, but obviously it didn’t. I was going to share the picture of us together.
Jo, commentors can’t embed images here, only Hoyden authors can do that. I rescued your hidden link though!
Re. Bill Bailey: was he wearing his “this is what a feminist looks like” t-shirt?
Evil company is using the excuse of economic lean times to run my beautiful husband into the ground, make him a shattered, rapidly aging, demoralized wreak, and then dump on him. And did I mention they are evil? Puts me in mind of labour movement agitprop, when they had songs about how women work for their husband’s boss, as I don’t get any say in the re-distribution of home labour that cannot help but result.
Am feeling a little drained after spending a significant portion of my evening arguing that, even if you think that long day care 5 days a week is hideously bad for infants and/or preschoolers, there’s nothing to be gained by being judgemental about families who choose it, or indeed assuming that there was any real unconstrained choice involved in them using long day care.
The spontaneous poetry recital part of the night was fun though.
Updating you all in case you are wondering where a Chally has been: I am exhausted. Between preparing to move house (under circumstances which are best not discussed on the Internet, for those Hoydenish types with whom I’ve discussed it!), bridesmaid/best friend duties for a forthcoming wedding and a just-past engagement party, volunteer work, uni work, a personal life I apparently have, and, oh yeah, occasionally managing to do my job, all while dealing with disability-induced fatigue, I am so. fricking. busy. and. tired. Now I have to go and launder in advance of returning uni texts to the library and getting to volunteering. Let us hope that nothing drastic happens this afternoon so that I can work.
Haha, thanks TT. I seem to be making a lot of commenting gaffes lately. 😛
orlando, mimbles and Chally, have just sent you packets of iHugs to be applied as needed. I hate feeling overwhelmed.
Adding hugs to Orlando, Mimbles and Chally. Hope things get better soon.
*group hugs* Thanks 🙂
Today has been quite nice, we went out to The Rocks for lunch at Lowenbrau and wandering the markets. We bought a mesmerising mobile thingy:
https://www.flickr.com/apps/video/stewart.swf?v=1535363810
Mim, that mobile thingy is utterly gorgeous. What do the pets think of it?
Mimbles, I bought one of those at Paddington markets to send to a friend OS. They’re really easy to post.
So, I think we’re about to become an employment-free household. I refuse to panic, we are capable people with many skills. Being unemployed is better than having him kill himself with work (those seem to be the choices in these dark times). Also I am thinking of re-training as a librarian. Anyone know anything useful about that?
I don’t think the pets have noticed it yet. I won’t show it to the bunnies, Cait hung a windchime in their enclosure and Carrots climbed on top of the hutch and performed acrobatic maneuvers to pull it down and destroy it. I seriously don’t know how he did it, he’d have had to be at almost full stretch to reach it.
(I’m not getting new comment notifications, I definitely confirmed my comment subscription for the thread and I’ve checked my spam folder, but no notifications.)
Mim, I’m not getting comment notifications at the moment either. There is WP skullduggery afoot!
orlando, we’ve just become a single income household all of a sudden for much the same reasons, which means I need to spend less time blogging and more time earning. I know some librarians, and most of them aren’t working in libraries right now 😦
Anyway, for the moment I’m distracting myself by observing the hyperbolic Nerd War between John Scalzi and Wil Wheaton on Twitter – there now appears to be a feline conspiracy behind #WheatonGate
Duelling blog posts:
Scalzi
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/09/23/and-thus-it-begins/
Wheaton
http://wilwheaton.net/2012/09/breaking-john-scalzi-embroiled-in-scandal/
Finally got SO to Do Something in the yard, and he enlisted son who is on school holidays: OMG SO MUCH GOT DONE – it’s wonderful not doing it all yourself. Visible Difference FTW!!
…Also: Harrumph. You tape bacon to your cat JUST ONE TIME and the WORLD NEVER LETS YOU FORGET IT…
As I understand things, getting a job as a librarian is as competitive as getting a job as an academic. And quite often poorly paid.
Ooh! I’m going to be up in Sydney in *mumble* five or so weekends (start of November) and am planning to have Sunday lunch at the Löwenbräu cellar at the Rocks. (It would perhaps have been better to make it during October if they do anything to celebrate Oktoberfest, but am looking forward to reacquainting myself with some good beer…)
My Otterday involved going to the gender dysphoria pshrink — happily this one seems willing to tick the box for me, unlike the previous one I’d been to.
Xanthë, I’m potentially up for a brewski in early November, not promising but. With a regular combination of family dramas, Sprog the Younger’s HSC exams, general brainfuzz and occasional spoon shortages, I’m not the most reliable gathering-attender.
My husband has a membership at Lowenbrau, which really just means he has his own stein with his name on it. It also means I’m a bit over the food and I’m always the designated driver, but that wouldn’t stop me coming along to a Hoyden brewski should such a thing eventuate!
Twitter nonsense is happy making. 🙂
Xanthë, congratulations on finding the right medical professional for your needs, that’s good news in anybody’s book.
Poorly paid is a phrase that at least includes the word paid. I had a most invigorating meeting today with several people from the Mitchell library, regarding a conference in April next year that I will be working on in an academic capacity. It was so nice just to be around people who seemed happy about their work.
@Tigtog: Thanks for the Scalzi/Wheaton links. I outraged my cats by laughing so loud.
There are otter pups at Perth Zoo? These holidays we WILL get back there, even with the car-phobic baby.
I’m enjoying the moment when I don’t have to wake said baby for the school run because my eldest has a playmate. Aaah the quiet.
Belatedly apropos of both the kids’ books and pirate discussions, I would like to nominate the character of Nancy Blackett (from the Swallows and Amazons series) as an inspirational hoyden.
Make that a play date.
Sunset, if you can hold off until he has time for such frivolities, my Nigel says he would like to write a guest post about Captain Nancy.
@Orlando- I guess I just meant that while, very occasionally, the years of training and living in poverty sometimes pay off in Academia, the same might not happen for librarians! I used to work in an archive, where staff were seriously underpaid (given the level of qualifications they had), over-worked, and worse micro-managed to death, which led to every member of that department taking time off with stress at some point. However, there was much about the work itself that was enjoyable.
Speaking of libraries, are all the archivists, historians and socio/politico/cultural writers of various stripes we have here aware of the NSW Mitchell library’s C.H. Currey and Nancy Keesing research fellowships? Deadline for applications is next week. The possibilities for projects appear to be very flexible, it seems they just want you to use the resources of the Mitchell on something interesting.
Barbequed billygoats, Orlando! There’s nothing frivolous about Captain Nancy. Tell your Nigel his post is eagerly anticipated.
And there’s no chance of me constructing anything coherent on that or any other subject unless I get some sleep. Even the birds seem to have insomnia tonight.