Our Open Thread this weekend is hosted by this otter eating a fish.
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 
Hi all! We are still a house of plague this long weekend, so we’re having a quiet one. Happily junior footy is not on, so that’s a plus. What are y’all up to?
Recovering from reading the Lymond Chronicles, ignoring housework, although it will get the better of me, and tackling the 14 volume TBR (to be read) pile.
Recovering from work trip, fuming over login problems with ESO and trying to get washing dry inside.
Discharged from hospital after 9 days with the specialist making the comment “It’s not us, it’s you”. In other words, they can’t explain the things going on with my body so they sent me home.
BK, that’s awful. Wishing for a diagnosis with an effective therapy regime for you stat.
**
My weekend? zoomed up to Newie on the train Friday night to go to my dad’s second-cousin’s 90th birthday party, which was nice to see all the cousins and second-cousins again. Then my brother gave me a lift back down to Sydders because he was visiting his middle daughter in her new share-house and we all went out to dinner and to see a bit of the Vivid lights/fireworks. A bit hectic, but fun. This arvo I’ve got band practice: all Clapton numbers. Is good.
Oh BK, that’s pretty horrifying! I hope you can find some answers soon!
I am feeling rather resentful of the fact that my weekends currently don’t feel much like weekends because of all we try to cram into them, and I’m usually too exhausted after work to socialise during the week.
Well that’s crap BK. I hope that you find it was in fact them and you get better at home.
I hate that shit. I’m sorry, BK.
BK, that sucks. Bad enough they can’t figure it out, without making remarks that sound (well, read, to me) like they’re hand-washing.
What I’m doing: I got a heap of knitting done today, some fourteen rounds of the big circular jacket I started late last month. My wrists are aching, but it’s good to be making progress!
First official day of winter and the first day here it’s been cold enough to have the heater on all day. The kitties approve.
Well Monday sucks already.
Mindy, my Monday also sucked. Today is a distinct improvement, but I still feel grumbly.
Spotted this in the news: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-02/st-kilda-sign-peta-searle-as-first-ever-female-coach-in-the-afl/5494336
The AFL has its first ever female coach. I hope she does really well and has thick skin. I suspect that the first female coach is going to cop more than her fair share of flak.
I’m hoping today is an improvement. At least I haven’t sent any emails getting cranky with someone for not telling me something that they did actually tell me in an email I hadn’t read.
In their latest effort to ensure us long-term unemployed dole bludgers get off our arses and look for work, our Employment Service Providers have been ordered to haul us in for meetings every fortnight, rather than every month. Given the average Employment Service Provider does approximately nothing to facilitate the process of finding work (or at least, this is my experience of them, anyway) I’ve no idea what this is supposed to achieve. Possibly we’re supposed to get so fed up with the notion of showing up every fortnight to report our lack of progress to them and this will somehow materialise work for us out of the aether.
Megpie71, I didn’t reply earlier because I just didn’t have words. I still don’t, but I didn’t want to ignore your comment. Bizarrely counterproductive bludger-bashing theatre is all I can come up with.
Don’t think I’m being visited by the black dog. Maybe the teacup poodle of discontent?
http://indulgy.com/post/ael0bFDGD1/black-teacup-poodle
That is a seriously kyewt pup.
My first experience I had with an employment agency was where they sent me to a job where I was paid a ‘training wage’ which was their way of avoiding minimum wage. Suffice to say training was minimal. I was fortunate in that I was able to apply for better jobs and secure one fairly quickly. I asked the employment agency about the training wage thing but they just fobbed me off.
The second was here where I live now and they were good. I didn’t get the job I applied for but they put me in touch with my now employer. But that was different, I was coming back from having my second bub and had a lot of experience in that type of work before.
Perhaps having to report every fortnight will mean that the Employment Agency has to put on more staff and it will create jobs that way? It is really quite bizarre. There are two jobs advertised in the local paper this week, both of which require a degree of some sort. There isn’t anything else. We have the local council, three supermarkets, McD, SubW and K*C and any number of cafes and motels but no one needs staff. It’s the economy that needs fixing and austerity measures aren’t going to solve that.
re Megpie’s experience: I was told by an embarrassed employment officer I needed to apply for jobs at the local sandwich shops if there were no jobs advertised in teaching that fortnight. “You have to be looking for work, ANY work.” My benefits would be cut off if I failed to apply for at least two jobs every fortnight. That was the ’80’s.
Fancy! Nothing has changed!