Welcome to Otterday! Today’s open thread is hosted by this Wildark Pforzheim otter rolling in the snow, courtesy of Cloudtail on flickr.
And for a bonus – this National Geographic photo essay on Britain’s endangered otters, The Sultans of Streams. I love these play-fighting otter youngsters.
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 
It’s been crazy birthday week at my place. My sons have birthdays two days apart (with three years between them) and one of them shares a birthday with one of their cousins. We don’t often have parties for them, but I like to make them birthday cakes. This year I went all out geek…
Cake One
Cake Two
Those cakes look awesome angharad! A+ parenting.
These otters always makes my week better. Thanks lauredhel 🙂
Week 2 of singing group went well 🙂
Just vegging out today, listening to the downpour and noodling out some code.
Rain? What is this rain of which you speak?
Today is a reminder that summer isn’t over yet, after a pleasantly cooler couple of weeks. Yuck!
Well done on the cakes, angharad. I hope all the blue food colouring comes through your systems soon!
Today I’ve just taken my new scooter for a run! Shiny red Smaug reached the end of his life, poor wee thing, and has been gracefully retired. The new scooter is a darkish dusty blue Shoprider Allrounder, with Actual Suspension (hoorah!) and splendid uphill grunt. All appropriate dragon-themed names considered.
ETA: I forgot to add a couple of squees – firstly, today a very belated Xmas present arrived – saffron crocus bulbs! And secondly, I just finished Karen Healey’s new SF/YA novel, When We Wake, and can highly recommend it.
Lauredhel, google is not helping with blue dragon names! Disappointed.
Thanks guys. We’re all pretty blue on the inside right now.
Tigtog, what sort of singing group are you going to? I went to my choir again last Wednesday after dropping out for a semester, it was so, so lovely. 🙂
We had some really nice cool days in Brisbane (with rain), but today it was a lot warmer and muggier again. Figures.
Tigtog: So far all I’ve got on blue dragons is Saphira, but Eragon was, erm, not the best thing ever. Seraphina and Sapphire are on my list too – what do you think?
There’s also Glaucus atlanticus, an awesome nudibranch also known as a blue dragon. Hmm.
ETA: OOH OOH OOH! Stormfly is a blue Deadly Nadder dragon from Riders of Berk. This could be the one.
Get Up are running a campaign to support the new federal anti-discrimination bill. There’s been a lot of opposition to the bill in the Australian and by groups who are very comfortable discriminating against others – it might need some support from people who think unlawful discrimination is actually a bit shit.
The Senate Committee report is here
I’ve messed up the links:
http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate_Committees?url=legcon_ctte/anti_discrimination_2012/report/index.htm
http://www.getup.org.au/campaigns/anti-discrimination/time-for-action/sign-the-petition
Khellendros is the name of a blue dragon from the DragonLance series (which is an offshoot of D&D). Sadly they are evil in this universe, but they supposedly nevertheless work well with humans and have lightning breath.
To no-ones surprise Telstra were condescending shits when I finally got escalated to local call centre operatives. The support people in the Phillipines were lovely as always but they don’t give them all the information they need to answer the queries. Could have saved myself hours of waiting on hold if they had had the right info from the beginning. Bring on the NBN so I’m not stuck with the fuckers.
I thought this article about “Media Refusal and Conspicuous Non-Consumption: The Performative and Political Dimensions of Facebook Abstention” was interesting, although it doesn’t describe the reasons I’m not on Facebook.
@lauredhel Temeraire or Nitidus?
My tribalstyle bellydance class is being extremely difficult.
Perth Writers Festival weekend – Margaret Atwood was rather delightful.
*iz jellus*
Ugh, Seth McFarlane as host at the Oscars is even worse than I imagined. That poor audience – at least I can hit the mute button whenever his gob is flapping.
Cool llamas and cool compassion by cool guy here (I hope).
I am not cool.
Nor tech savvy. 🙂
Duplicate comment and broken link removed ~ M
Unfollowed two guys who don’t get it today. Added bonus, one of them referred to people calling out the bullshit as ‘shrill’.
Thanks, Mindy!
Rape prevention advice! Useless, insulting, bizarre and some of it, unachievable (vomit on demand? I can’t, and yes, you read that right).
The comments are headdesk material.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/pee-or-flee-unis-bizarre-safety-advice/story-e6frfrnr-1226581858563
I can belch on demand. That’s almost vomiting. But it also requires a degree of conscious self-control that’s probably hard to achieve when someone’s trying to assault you.
Also a friend of mine was sexually assaulted whilst vomiting into a toilet, so you know, not a sure thing even if you can manage it.