Welcome to this weekend’s Open Thread! Today’s hosts are two North American River Otters, courtesy of the Smithsonian National Zoo.
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 
Have just put up a US gun culture thread for discussion of the NRA press conference clusterfail etc. Thought it would be nice not to have two consecutive Open Threads be all about gun culture, so please take any gun discussion there.
As my FB friends already know, Sprog the Younger had a mixed week – she was disappointed with her HSC/ATAR, but has been accepted to an excellent technology art school anyway and so is now very happy and looking forward to next year’s studies.
Glad to hear the Tog’s good news on the really good school front. Hope she has a blast.
On the ‘oh my was I a little stressed while packing’ I have discovered that I packed two pairs of shorts for MyNigel – who was away which is why he didn’t do his own, plus somehow left out a t-shirt he had left to be packed, and completely forgot to pack undies for my son and only packed about 3 shirts for me for a 8 day trip. Kmart was visited this morning.
On the plus side I have two excellent Xmas parties to attend and one to endure before I can nick off to the second of the fun ones.
On Monday I will become a hermit to recover.
Glad to hear StY is happy about next year’s schooling 🙂
Mindy, sorry, there is no packing disaster story that will ever compete with the time I had the flu, Adam supervised the packing, and Mrthen6 packed, for a reenactment long weekend in the middle of no where, one bouncy ball and NOTHING ELSE. The only saving grace was that the viking clothes were packed separately by Adam.
I need to bake more mince pies. How, exactly, are there none left from the 9 dozen I’d already done? *eyes Mr15 and Mr11 with deep suspicion*
Ms14 has decided that the song she wrote is ready to be shared on youtube again (the first version recorded still needed some work and was made private after a day or two) so I recorded her performing it this morning and am waiting for the upload to finish. It’s taking FOREVER, and the boys have been complaining about connection problems lately. I think our internet is semi-borked.
I’ve discovered a new MMO (run for the hills). This time it’s Dungeons and Dragons Online, which it is possible to play for free. Yes, as a freebie player you only get a limited range of races and classes (can’t play as a half-elf, half-orc or drow from the standard mix, can’t play as the warforged custom race for this world) and you only get the standard range of adventure content. However, it’s a pretty good experience so far (I’m playing an elf ranger, and I’m enjoying the differences between the pen and paper game I’m used to and the changes they’ve made to make it challenging for online players in an MMO environment – the major one I’m noticing is that the levelling up is a LOT slower online than it is in the pen and paper and dice version of the game).
The other MMO I’ve run across lately is one called Wartune, which I’ll probably not be bothering with long term. The main thing that bugged me was that it’s very much of the “pointless armour” model for the characters (mine was a male mage, because that’s the character model wearing the most believable clothing!) and about the only saving grace it had in my opinion was that the pointless armour definitely came in Dude as well as Lady (the male fighter’s model leaves the abdomen uncovered; my Overthinker brain spends large amounts of time shrieking very loudly about this). Also, they come across as being somewhat desperate to have players, offering regular bonuses for remaining logged in for any amount of time.
So, my plan for the next however long: spend a bit of time reading, a bit of time writing, and a fair old whack of time levelling up my character in D&DO.
I’ll tell you what I want…what I really, really want:
A Melbourne production of the Spice Girls musical!
Surely Ballieu/Doyle want to enhance our reputation as a (musical) theatre town? I don’t care if the reviews from the West End say it isn’t “edifying” – cheese is good for the Victorian economy, gosh darn it!
@mimbles – we found the t-shirt and Kmart came to the rescue with the rest.
First Chrissy party was great, although Ms 6 discovered that you can bork one of those automatic public toilets by pressing the close button then skipping out. She made sure of this by doing it twice. It takes about an hour for the toilet to realise that no one is inside to press the button.
Mindy, those toilets are supposed to open automatically, even if they are occupied, after 10 minutes (they sound a warning at 9 minutes).
A thoughtful post from Destroy the Joint on Facebook today, sharing links to help folks who don’t have a fun time at Christmas due to family violence or general overwhelmment.
They’re asking those who have more helpful links to share them over at the DtJ page.
@Arcadia
It must have been well and truly borked then, because it closed up tight and refused to let anyone in. Maybe it had had enough?
Merry Christmas Hoydens! It has been a great year so far, looking forward to more of the same next year.
Seems my family wasn’t alone in watching Brave last night – quite a few mentions on FB etc. One of them linked to this analysis piece By Lili Loofbourow:
Loofbourow got me thinking more deeply about the ways in which Brave surprised and gratified me. Good stuff.