Welcome to this weekend’s Open Thread! Today’s host otter is kicking back in the sun. What are you up to this weekend?
[image via Morgan Schmorgan 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 
Don’t think of it as losing an Attorney-General, think of it as gaining a QC. Sigh.
Nearly 15 years in Parliament is a good innings. I’m not surprised that she doesn’t want to campaign for another election, not even in such a safe seat as Gellibrand. I just posted on some of the media spin about this resignation over in the Media Circus thread.
I signed up for a term’s worth of choir workshops! I haven’t sung in a choir for years, it will be a good chance to get my harmony ear back into gear.
There’s a rather finger-waggy art exhibit at the Eden Project featuring a big pile of all the electrical and consumer goods the average person throws out in their lifetime.
You’re meant to feel guilty seeing it and make a mental note to join Greenpeace when you get home, but it completely backfires because everyone who shuffles past it says (or at least said on the day I was there) ‘Hmm…thought it would be more than that.’
tigtog, choir workshops sounds like fun. I need people to sing with, must have a look at what’s around up our way.
Went to visit my dad tonight, he’s doing well. The brace came off his leg on Friday and he’s getting around fine with just a walking stick, the surgeon is really pleased by how well his knee has recovered. Still a little bit of concern over his kidney function after the lithium toxicity dramas so we’re not quite sure when they’ll let him go home, but hopefully soon.
I’ve been reading Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair and loving it. Been having trouble concentrating on novels lately so it’s nice to find I can still be drawn in and lose myself in a story.
mimbles, I’m already looking around for a regular community choir nearby as well (I’ve been doing some googling and there are a few options around the inner west). It’s just so long since I’ve done it that I decided to pay a bit extra for a term with more of a workshop focus so that I can get some tutoring as well as just the singing – I’m doing this through Big Music in Crows Nest, where mr tog is currently signed up for their rock band program. It’s a bit of a hike, which is why I probably will only do a term there, but it’s a good way to ease back in to the collaborative musical habit.
I had a visit from a kitty during a doctor’s appointment yesterday! Doc stepped out to get something and kitty walked in. Turns out she’s probably a neighbour’s cat (she has a fancy collar and registration tag) who walked in one day. The people at the clinic made the mistake of giving her tuna, and, well, she’s owned the place ever since. Pretty cool to spend ten minutes with a cat on the lap during an appointment. 😀
Also scored three sleeveless tunics at the South Melbourne Market today, so I’m happy.
I’m afraid I have no time for people who let their cats wander, today, having been regularly chasing away a cat who’s getting amongst my chickies. Lock up your damn predators, people!
My first thought was ‘ew! hygiene!’ But I’ve had problems with freely roaming cats in my garden too – in my case with digging up seedlings (because my freshly dug vegie garden is the ideal toilet apparently). The problem has largely gone away since my neighbours moved, taking their horde of semi-feral cats with them.
Lauredhel and Angharad – for me it was SQUEEEE KITTY which any encounter with a cat is. I don’t let my own cats outside, more for their own safety than any other reason (very few native birds in my suburb). I certainly wouldn’t if I lived in the inner ‘burb where the clinic is, either.
Nonetheless I hope I get to see her again. 🙂
I like cats too, although not as much these days following the garden problems (I get clucky with plants too). The comfort factor of having a pet available to patients is probably not a bad thing, but I think if a doctor’s surgery was going to have a pet they should make sure it is one they know is clean and being properly looked after.
Oh, I love cats. I have two rescue kitties. Which has just hardened my annoyance against people who let their cats wander around amongst a whole pile of urban hazards as well as their potential prey (and there are huge populations of native birds around here as well as captive/domesticated ones). Unless they’re farm mousers, they need to be inside.
Hey, Orlando: I saw you mention your book on Feministe’s Shameless Self-Promotion thread! Go you!
Self-marketing through social media – it’s the way of the future, my friend!
Did anyone watch Elementary last night? Any thoughts? I found it a trifle disappointing, but then it was hard not to compare it to the BBC Sherlock series and that was so well done…
I was reading the history of the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment in the USA and I remain shocked by how the progressives let themselves be outmaneuvered and defeated by Phyllis Schlafly. They were so convinced that they would win that they didn’t bother to do the work to carry people with them (cf. Australian republicans in 1999).
A man I recently met in another department at work who is cheery and talkative but does manage to work in unnecessary compliments and references to me being female has set off my manager’s alarm bells for creepy/stalky behaviour. Not in his behaviour to me but his behaviour to a colleague – calling in to the department with a quick message for me, and when I was unavailable seeking out my colleague for a friendly chat in her office which included asking her out and being disappointed at “no”.
The colleague and I were not getting the same creep alert despite my having noted that his style of compliments were not so appropriate.
On further consideration though, I’m wondering if my own internal creep alert is calibrated too far on the make excuses side, and am glad my boss is keeping a beady eye out, flagging her concerns and quite prepared to make a big deal of anything further.
Anyone else wonder if their own creep alert have been socialised out of much usefulness?
I haven’t worked in an office for decades now, so I think my own creep alert has done the opposite: most of those socialised don’t-rock-the-boat responses to creepy behaviours have atrophied, so that I appear obviously startled and contemptuous. So far that hasn’t yet resulted in a man yelling at me for appearing contemptuous, but I know that it easily could.
The appearance of your site has completely changed in the last few days, but no one seems to be mentioning it, so I’m left wondering if perhaps I’m visualising something very different to the rest of you…
Haven’t noticed any great changes myself. What browser are you using? I use firefox, Chrome and IE. Of course I could just be completely missing it too 😉
Now I’m looking at it thinking ‘wait, is that bit different?’
The change I see isn’t small, so it must be just me. I’m using whatever browser that comes with a HP TouchPad (it’s like an iPad, except not). I’ll hop on one of my other devices then, HaT will probably be back to my usual broadcast!
Yes, it was just me. Probably a sign of the fact that I suspect the HP TouchPad isn’t really supported anymore, or maybe it chose a simpler display format because it’s not a very powerful device. Anyway, it only happens on that device. In any case, HaT looked like Captain Awkward did before they started their new website (although now I’m wondering if that was just me as well!).
Arcadia, I did change the mobile theme a few days ago, but only that. If you’re seeing it different on a normal monitor, then perhaps you’ve accidentally chosen the mobile version of the site?
I’ve also noticed the change on my phone; I find the “new” version less useful.
The old mobile theme was running off a plugin that progressively got less functional, so I switched to a different one. I’m in the process of shifting the whole site to a new responsive theme which should work better as a whole *fingers crossed*