Today’s otter is courtesy of the Greens, via Mimbles. The election is expected to be called either this weekend or Monday for September 7th (yep a week before Gillard’s date) so if you aren’t enrolled to vote you only have a week to get on the electoral roll.
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 
Boys out at the bike track to give me some clear space to work on my sodding librarianship essay. This is not my happy face.
Despite having a very good week with music rehearsals on Tuesday and Thursday nights, my cold has decided to take me down a peg afterwards. This is not my happy face either.
Another good post from Miri:
“They’re Your Friends/Family/Neighbors!”: On Activism and Appeals to Kinship
BTW, I’ve just added a certain distinctive surname to the moderation filter, because Voldeschwyz really needs to not be getting any more links from other blogs right now – he craves attention even when it’s the very negative kind, but it’s very very toxic for him and must be extraordinarily painful for his family and past partners.
I understand the temptation to discuss that flounce and reflounce with a reverse pike, and I don’t want to stop anybody doing so entirely, I just ask for some circumspection.
If you’re one of our readers who has no idea who I’m talking about, I envy you.
Voldeschwyz, I am amused. Not by the entity of course.
Meanwhile, a cold is also kicking my butt. Keep waking for hours every night because my body won’t sleep if it can’t breathe. As a fetal incubator, I get to shoot saline up my nose while waiting most impatiently for my immune system’s near inevitable victory.
Last night I got to meet Pavlov’s Cat, Dogpossum, Dr Naomi, Berenice Balconey, and catch up with crazybrave after far too long, at Ampersand Duck’s place for dinner cooked by her hubby. It was a most enjoyable night.
That’s quite a gathering, Mindy! V. jelly.
Megpie, that week does sound draining, even the OK bits. Enjoy your Monday.
It’s been a week. Started back at uni on Tuesday; first lab Wednesday; counseling appointment Thursday; Friday some friend to humanity threw a rock through the driver’s side rear window of our car and we had to get that fixed before heading out to a house viewing in the outer suburbs; Saturday was handing in the application to rent the place we viewed on Friday; and today I have a birthday party to attend (the son of one of my cousins is turning one, and they’re having a barbecue to celebrate). I’m currently looking forward to Monday, where the only thing I have to do is hand in my Centrelink income & earnings statement.
What is it with the op-ed squad lately tut-tutting about the young folk and their animal/character onesies? Why do they care? Why should anybody care about such a harmless trend?
We haz an election
http://aec.gov.au/enrol/
I have no clue who Voldeschwyz is, and will bask in my ignorance.
It took me a moment to realise who Voldeschwyz was, because I took it literally.
Election question: who actually does have sausage sizzles at their polling place? I’ve never seen one, although I’ve only actually voted in a Federal election at a polling booth on the actual day twice, 2001 and 2010. I voted at Australia House/Gringotts in London in 2004, requiring a bag search watched closely by police holding stood weaponry, and pre-poll in 2007. No sausage sizzles at any time, nor do my husband or I recall them from the rural school booths our parents voted at (staffed, in the case of my in-laws). Is this alleged Australian tradition a myth?
Looks like this is another Mary-away-from-home election, although I’ll just be a within-state absentee at one of the aforementioned sizzle-free rural polling places.
I have had several sausage sangers on election days over the years. It used to be an integral part of the day along with the school polling place cake stall fund raiser. We were disappointed that our first voting day in current location was sausage sizzle less. I have encouraged MyNigel and his local group to do a sizzle for the upcoming election. Just have to check with Council that it is okay to do so.
I’ve only ever seen sausage sizzles at school-hall polling places, run by the school’s P&C. When I voted at the local Town Hall, there was no sizzle.
I’ve seen both sausage sizzles and bake sales locally, at primary school polling booths.
I have seen several sausage sizzles, at schools and church halls. Have also seen cake stalls, lamington drives, second-hand book sales and devonshire teas.
I feel lucky to have lived in such quality booth-areas, I can tell you. West End, Bulimba and Ashgrove in Brisbane, and Weston Creek and Tuggeranong in Canberra. I didn’t see any good booth fundraising in Ipswich, though. My overseas friends find the sausage sizzle almost as weird as compulsory voting.
I’ve no idea what you are talking about with mentions of Voldeschwyz. I shall shrug and move on.
The only sausage sizzle I’ve seen was at my son’s primary school, and run by their OSHC. Given that I now work for the organization and they’re strapped for cash, I might recommend that they do it again. There are some covered areas to occupy on the day, in the event of rain.
I expect to be occupied on the day, handing out Greens how to vote fliers, as I have since about 2000, or thereabouts (state election was my first). I’ll probably vote early for that reason, saves watching the line and deciding when to get in it.
I had to put my beloved golden retriever down yesterday, after a very sudden health complication that the vet told me he wouldn’t recover from. I’m still crying. I’d had him for 14 years. My only consolation is that he was well loved and had a good life, and I was able to spend time cuddling him and feeding him as many treats as he wanted before saying goodbye.
Merinnan, how awful. I hate it that their lives are so much shorter.
I was too young when we lost our first dog to really remember what I felt, but I clearly remember when we lost our first cat when I was about 10 years old (who had been my mum’s cat before she got married, and who used to put up with me throwing him over my shoulders to play all sorts of games that usually ended with me using him as a pillow, and whose first sign of his fatal illness was that he scratched me for the first time ever) – Mum told me that the vet was going to put him down while I was in the bath, and I swear I added at least half an inch to the water level before I finally got out and cried myself to sleep.
Rusty had a very good life, and his suffering was shortened because Mum and Dad got him checked out the moment his behaviour changed, but 40 years later I still really miss that cat.
Sorry to hear that Merinnan, it sucks having to say goodbye to a beloved pet.
Merinnan, I’m so sorry 😦 *hugs* if they’re wanted.
My kids’ primary school P&C runs a sausage sizzle and cake stall whenever there’s an election on.
Tigtog, I went out to the movies tonight with 2 onesie-clad teens. I’m all in favour of the public celebration of silliness that the trend embodies 🙂
The BBC has announced the new Doctor. Linked below, but without the name in case anyone doesn’t wish to know at this time.
[Redacted]
Nick, I feel a Whovian thread coming on.
Nick, I feel a Whovian thread coming on.
Hugs, Merinnan.
I’m not sure I’ve seen sausage sizzles, but cake stalls have been almost compulsory at the places I’ve voted (primary schools and the odd church hall).
So sorry for your loss, Merinnan.
Thanks. I’ve lost other pets before – it’s rare that there’s been a time when I haven’t had a pet – but this one has hit the hardest. My bunnies seem to know that something was up, because they let me cuddle them for much longer than they’ll normally put up with.
On the polling place thing, every time I’ve voted at a primary school there’s been a sausage sizzle, and sometimes a cake stall as well. Church halls sometimes have them, sometimes don’t. There was one election several years back where there was essentially a mini-fete at one of the schools hosting a polling place, with both food and craft stalls.
This
Merinnan: I’m sorry.
Continuing on my trivial otterspam of the week, it turns out there’s a crowdsourcing website for info about sausage sizzles and cake stalls at polling places. It only has 10 data points though.
Have added the local primary school to their database. Well found, Mary!