Our Open Thread this weekend is hosted by this otter’s whiskers, courtesy of Tambako the Jaguar 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 
I am writing fiction for a Monday deadline. WHY AM I DOING THIS AAARGH. That is all on my front.
My sleep cycle is going all over the place. I blame copperbadge (aka Sam Storyteller) who wrote some really, really good Harry Potter AU fic years ago – google “Stealing Harry” if you want to read it. I also blame myself for putting it all on my e-reader. I go to bed, tired as, and start reading in order to knock myself out and finish the descent into sleep. I keep reading… and reading… and reading, and eventually I notice it’s after 1am, and I should have really been asleep already. But there’s just a few more pages, and then oh gods, it’s 4am and I’m not going to get anywhere near enough sleep today, am I?
So my plans for today (after about two days of this in a row) largely consist of spending the day in my pyjama-equivalents (I don’t own any actual PJs, but I wear old t-shirts and leggings which have moved beyond the point of being wearable in public to bed) doing very little and hopefully catching up on some sleep tonight. Yes, I’m currently working my way through “Cartographer’s Craft” (another bit of copperbadge’s HP fic) but the e-reader is down to the red bar in the power indicator, and it only recharges via USB from the computer, so I have a chance of being able to get to sleep at a reasonable hour.
In the meantime, I restarted FF XII, and who knows, maybe I’ll get a bit further along the way than I previously have been.
Soup of the day at our place – Beef and Vegetable. Made up the stock yesterday, skimmed it off earlier today, and added a couple of onions, some spuds, the tail end of a celery (leaves and all), a couple of carrots, a parsnip, and a quarter of a turnip, plus a cup of McKenzies “Soup Mix” legumes and grains and the meat from the stock bones. Now it’s all sitting in the slow cooker coming up to a nice slow simmer. Should be ready for eating probably tomorrow morning some time. I might wind up throwing in some of the parsley I keep harvesting from the back garden as well (I checked earlier today and I now have three ziplock bags of curly parsley in the freezer waiting to be used up) just to see whether it makes things any better.
‘Tis the season here too megpie… I’ve just put a big oxtail & barley soup in the crockpot for tomorrow night. We’ve been eating a lot less beef lately (because environment) so this is a bit of a treat.
That sounds completely delicious. I developed an unfortunate prejudice towards slow cookers in my youth (in my family, food was cooked until it was really dead, and I have somehow associated slow cookers with this process.) Funnily enough, in latter years my dad has been the ground breaker in using a slow cooker to make edible food. I am definitely going to suggest similar soups to him.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-14/suspended-mp-geoff-shaw-apologises-at-melbourne-comedy-event-/5523970
Why did they engage him? His anti-safe-and-legal abortion stance would be such a crowd pleaser?
I am guessing Geoff Shaw wants the vote or approval of the far right demographic: he presents himself as a rebel, and gives a giant FU to the establishment, at the same time he advocates the most conservative political position. So what the hell was he doing at a comedy festival?
I guess comedy festivals are not the bastion of progressive thought I have hitherto believed them to be.
?
It was one interview-a-pollie in a series taking place regularly at the Wheeler Centre, not part of a comedy festival, and he was invited to speak some time ago exactly because he’s a controversial conservative and Sammy J is the opposite. It was a contrived-to-get-bums-on-seats head-to-head that got more publicity and attention than expected due to events of the last few weeks.
Comedy is just another form of show business. Individual comedians are often progressive, or at least progressive-ish, but there are plenty of politically apathetic comedians and a strong redoubt of conservatives and libertarians. Comedy promoters just want to get the punters rolling up at the box office, and the managers of the big professional venues do the live-performance equivalent of click-bait all the time.
Well that makes sense. And is entirely depressing.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/15/tim-carmody-unrest-grows-over-appointment-of-queensland-chief-justice
Is this an issue of the independent courts, or upsetting the establishment? Both?
Yesterday was my first experience as a “dance mom” (as my US friends call it) as my 7 year old performed in her first dance concert (we had dance concert refusal until this year). She was very nervous but awesome. Very proud. Still trying to remove the black eyeliner from her eyes (note to self, do not use my own super-dooper-expensive-doesn’t-budge-eyeliner on a 7 year old). I have a 2000 word paper due on Friday (actually was due on the 6/6 but I got an extension because of being unwell). Then I have to get the dissertation proposal to a point where it can be sent on to the Ethics Committee (please be to the gods that it gets Ethics approval. My supervisor telling me it is going to freak the Ethics Committee out is not helping me feel confident about this). I am also trying to negotiate a 100 hour placement start (and hopefully finish) by the end of Semester 2. Oh and a supplemental exam in mid-late July. And I have a teenager with almost 17 year old attitude. Enough said.
Fingers crossed that it all works out for you BK. I hope the Ethics Committee are freaked out in a ‘wow, that sounds amazing no one has thought of that before’ way. Sorry, no arsevise for the teenager bit, haven’t made it there yet.
The tea cup poodle of self doubt has been joined by the black snake of self loathing. Such a fun combination. Also, and I mean really brain(?!?), I am feeling guilty because I saw a woman IN MY DREAM fall over and I was so wrapped up in myself that I didn’t go and see if she was all right. Can I have a do over on today?
Oh Mindy, your descriptions are so very witty that I almost forget to notice you’re describing a real problem. Take care of yourself and give that jerkbrain a good kick up the backside.
Jo: How did you go with that deadline?
MegPie: I am like that with reading! And my sleep cycle has been crap since I was 16. I would love to have a “normal” cycle happening!
Eilish: My grandmother used to cook things until they were “dead” too. Oh the memories of slushy bland overcooked food. Not good. Geoff Shaw gives me the creeps. Totally creepy.
Mindy: I hope the Ethics Committee sees it that way! Sorry to hear of your visit from the black snake. I know that one all too well myself and wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Hope you can claw your way back out of the hole.
Thank you. I went and did a pilates class which seemed to be the longest hour of my life and worked out a lot of tension which seemed to help.
I go on long cycles uphill when I need to get rid of tension like that, Mindy. Works pretty well.
The deadline went ok, BK, thanks for asking. But I have decided that I am definitely not a fiction writer. It’s just painful and agonising and your characters actually have to do shit and that is so very boring and annoying to write. How is the ethics thing going? I had to do one of those once. It was just a formality though, the project was just an oral history one with no real ethical issues. Good luck!