Your open thread this weekend is hosted by this mama sea otter with rare twin babies, snapped in Morro Bay, California by Mike Baird.
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 
That cold pizza sure was a good breakfast!
The highlight of this weekend for us is going to be going to the “Secrets of the Afterlife” Ancient Egypt exhibition at the museum. What else are people up to?
mr tog is off with his rugby mates this evening, so sprog the younger and I will have a marathon of the supernatural shows we’ve recorded that he doesn’t particularly like.
I was going to a ball but now I have a cold 😦
/Cinderella
Playing with Tess at the Union hotel (our usual haunt, and it’s so nice and so is the food) 5-7 pm Sunday. A very civilised time! If you’re in Melbourne it’s in Union Road Brunswick and I recommend us very highly!
My garage is full of nerds making stuff for tabletop wargaming. I have two extra kids and they are all having a movie marathon and I have escaped to the bedroom with the laptop. It is all quite lovely. If only the washing would dry life would be perfect. Except if I think about politics.
I have given away a bellydancing event this evening because it is freezing and wet out there. Need to bake today/tomorrow morning for a birthday afternoon tea tomorrow for my SiL.
The foul weather has decided mr tog in not going out to watch the rugby after all (he didn’t have tickets to the ground, he was meeting them at a sports pub), and Sprog the Younger has spent the arvo and evening with friends, so instead of my supernatural TV catchup marathon I’m watching Sherlock Holmes Game Of Shadows with Sprog the Elder while mr tog practices his bass lines.
Probably heading to the Olympic Park Water Playground tomorrow. We are having some real issues with two house-bound rainy weekends in a row plus a three year old who seems to be undergoing some kind of transition (eating a lot, sleeping a lot, in a foul mood a lot; that usually means growing physically and/or cognitively). I don’t think the Water Playground will wear him out but it’s a start.
I finally finished a big knitting project done for actual MONEY this week. Nice to have some extra cash, and to see a friend very happy with the result, but knitting is so time-consuming that I much prefer to do stuff I get to keep.
Here she is wearing it.
Tonight I was in danger of falling asleep in front of Midsomer Murders (not the fault of the show!) so got up and did a pic of Mr K and Rochelle. The background gives a fair idea of the size and state of his workshop, though it’s not got that many doors. Rochelle decided it was her domain when she came to live with us.
I will never forgive the hipster young hosts of The Riff on the V music channel for alerting me to the atrocity that is Céline Dion and Anastacia’s 2002 cover of You Shook Me All Night Long. I had managed to avoid knowledge of it for 11 years you twerps!
Sorry, I had to share my pain. Please accept as an antidote this far more upliftingly exuberant hit song cover version done for a skit on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon: Young Jimmy Fallon & Justin Timberlake Sing Toto’s Africa At Summer Camp.
Fred Nile’s at it again.
Anyone have a list of moderate Liberals to write to over this crap?
Ugh. Many voters in Newcastle don’t want the port privatised anyway – the sums don’t add up for the citizens in terms of the return the city would see from privatising the port compared to the existing arrangements at all, but O’Farrell is determined to barge it through the legislature. Adding Nile’s bill to the existing neocon clusterfuck is an insult laid on top of injury.
My cat just stole a corn chip. She’s been doing this today with various of us for the first time ever. Odd.
The Atlantic: A Pickup Artist’s Guide to Seducing a Sandwich
Do read the comments.
Had the most horrible dream last night which keeps leaking over into today. I hope I don’t run into anyone who looks like the person in my dream last night. It might be quite upsetting to have a stranger suddenly burst into tears on sighting you.
Mindy, I loathe those kind of dreams.
I read the comments (funny!) but couldn’t hack reading the Atlantic article. I hold my breath when I pass a Subway – what is it that makes those shops smell so bad? – and the one time I was desperate enough to try a sandwich there, it had no flavour. I like my food bland but this was like eating soggy cardboard.
Re RU486’s PBS listing, a health practitioner I know warns that it’s only for use up to 49 days after the previous menstrual period (so, three weeks at the latest after someone with even a “textbook” menstrual cycle is likely to be aware of a pregnancy), which is a short period of time for anyone who has long cycles, doesn’t have regular cycles or who doesn’t have easy access to a doctor.
It looks from http://www.earlyoptionpill.com/section/faq/ like this is the limit in the United States also, does anyone have any info about what the evidence is? Is using RU486 after 7 weeks LMP dangerous, ineffective or unstudied; or is this guideline very conservative and could be lengthened?
@Mary – I always heard 9 weeks for RU486. And the reason it is not useful after that is that it is less likely to actually work.
My brother once tried getting a job at Subway, and had to quit, because he is left-handed and he found it too awkward to assemble sandwiches while moving along the counter in the standard setup they have.
Grrr. I saw an ad from the tram this morning that said “A handy way to annoy the neighbours.” I’ve no idea what it was advertising, but what a gobshite horrible line. Yeah, annoying people is such a worthwhile ambition; adding stress to their time at home, invading their privacy (I’m guessing whatever this thing is was a noise-maker).
I’ve spent a lot of money getting help for stress and anxiety and panic attacks triggered by noise-making neighbours. That ad is not. fucking. funny.
/rant
Have just seen Toy Story 3 again, and I am even more uncomfortable now than I was at first viewing with the gender-conformative, shaming crap that gets loaded onto Ken.
In a kids’ movie, really? Do you HAVE to include the anti-girl, anti-gay BS??!
So, did I miss some announcement about the Fairfax paywall?
Went to look at something in my local Fairfax rag this morning, and had a post come up saying “you have reached your limit of free articles, would you like to pay?”
Um, no, I don’t think I would.
I’m not really surprised: I remember a little while ago when they created the login, and it was all “we are not making anyone pay, it’s just going to make it more convenient for you!” Maybe they said explicitly “we are not making anyone pay YET”, or maybe I just inferred that was what was going on.
Anyway, with the Guardian having gone local (and it being where I got a lot of my non-Australian news even before that), I’m really not too fussed. I have been wondering for a while why I bothered with Fairfax, and this is a really easy way to wean myself off it.
I will miss Cathy Wilcox’s cartoons, and some of Alan Moir’s (although many of his have been a bit repetitive and/or off over the past year or so, when he’s on, he’s on). That’s about it. But my work gets the dead tree version so I can always flip through that to see if Ms Wilcox has done anything interesting (and anyway, she’s on twitter).
(Oh, and a lot of the Daily Life work is great, but it’s the kind of thing I get to read on blogs, anyway, so I won’t miss it hugely.)
I mean, I have no philosophical objection to paying for something I like. But quite frankly, I haven’t been getting enough out of it lately for me to want to muck around, give them my private info, and pay.
I am fairly sure I’m not the only one who feels this way.
I don’t think you’re alone there at all, Jo. Maybe your comment deserves to be a post?
Jonathan Holmes signed off his final Media Watch on Monday with a plea for people to pay to subscribe to some form of news that pays its reporters. Another view worth considering. Personally, I’m waiting to hear what Newswithnipples tells me to do.
Jo, I saw mention of the paywall and free article limit somewhere on the news, but not an announcement. I feel much the same way about the site. I don’t mind flicking through the paper while I’m waiting for a coffee, but I read it less and less, and only buy Thursday edition (for the rapidly shrinking Green Guide) and the Saturday one. I’m thinking of giving that the boot, too. What used to be the A4 and had interesting stuff is now the Life and Style or whatever it’s called – food, food, movies, road trips for them as has cars, maybe one interesting article. GW is very hit and miss (self-promotion by a self-claimed sociopath, GW? Really?).
The Age website I like less and less. Far too much rubbishy ads and idiot articles, it’s getting very tabloid. Blowed if I’m paying for the *cough* privilege *cough* of skimming it when I’m bored at work.
In thrilling and exciting news* I’ve started knitting a tunic for myself. It’s dark brown merino-silk 4ply (Adorn, from Wool Baa in Albert Park). The pattern’s very basic, just a triangle, so it drapes with a sort of handkerchief hem effect, but I’m adding a broken cable pattern on the front. The broken part came by accident when I was trying out a test patch last night, and cable interrupted by reverse stocking looks really good (think cable check in just one strand). Fingers crossed I don’t make any mistakes! 🙂
/knitting geekery
*not really
TT, the thought crossed my mind, but I didn’t quite have time. I will put something up on the weekend.
Orlando, for the record, I do agree in principle with Holmes, I just refuse to pay for clickbait. (I don’t think you were suggesting anything different.) And yes, happy to wait for NWN’s instructions 😉
Re Fairfax, in terms of actual announcements:
Fairfax unveils digital subscription plans (June 6, on a Fairfax site):
Indeed, I was getting a reminder (and a tighter limit, at 10 articles) while overseas in June. I haven’t found much non-Fairfax commentary on it.
It’s not so much in the interests of the corporate news model, I guess, but I wish there was a way to subscribe to or pay for news that wasn’t tightly bound to a single publisher. At the other end there’s crowdfunding, but I’m probably also generally not interested in closely supporting the work of individual journalists as my main form of support for the profession.
Members of the God Squad let a little girl die but apparently such people are partially protected by U.S. law. It’s a great argument for secularism.
Artist creates realistic Barbie doll
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/fashion-beauty/artist-creates-realistic-barbie-doll-based-on-average-female-measurements/story-fneszwgd-1226674268434
Something for the Whovians:
http://cheezburger.com/7613918464
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH I was dreaming about the Daleks last night and now this!!!