Our Open Thread this weekend is hosted by these three sea otters, courtesy of the Monterey Aquarium.
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 
Anyone interested in some free fresh science fiction & fantasy for the rest of the year?
Week Two of the Cert II completed. Trainer was sick for one day, so we’ll probably be using our “catch-up day” to cover the stuff we didn’t get to then. This week’s thrilling topics included “Produce simple word processed documents” and “Communicate electronically”. Next week we have “Deliver a service to customers”, “Process customer complaints”, “Work effectively with others” and “Work effectively in a business environment” to look forward to.
Still exhausted and out of cope. Problem is I have about three hours free “public cope” per day, and I use up at least one and a half of them just getting there by public transport, even with the steps I take such as spending the entire commute with the music player going flat out. After those three hours are used up, I’m starting to draw on my reserves, which don’t charge up as fast as they used to.
Megpie: so… it’s “emails, sending emails, receiving emails, deleting emails. The web. Using a mouse, mices, using mice. Clicking, double clicking. The computer screen, of course. The keyboard. The… bit that goes on the floor down there”?
Do they not even offer part time for people who need it?
Sorry about the lack of cope
Nice piece from Greg Jericho at SBS on the Jacqueline Lambie foofaraw and what the double standards really are.
I also enjoyed this list of 50 essential feminist films – so many I haven’t seen!
Just happened to catch a repeat episode of Doctor Who 4.2 Fires of Pompeii, and suffered a bout of the history niggles. There they were, a provincial family living in Pompeii, and the mother claims that the daughter “could have been a Vestal Virgin” because she had the gift of prophecy. Nuh-uh. Only virgins of impeccable patrician Roman ancestry on both sides qualified to become Vestal Virgins, and supernatural gifts were irrelevant – they simply had to sacrifice their prime fertile years to the service of Rome, since apparently the goddess Vesta viewed that as sufficient veneration to keep her happy. There were other aggravations, but I won’t bore you with them.
[Comment deleted – sockpuppet for previous banned commentor detected ~ tt]Was this meant for the neutrality post?
These new ads for ‘ladies’ number plates for cars in NSW are really starting to p me off. The idea is that you get a suitably emasculating set of number plates, e.g. pink and white, and your husband/partner/boyfriend (because there are no same sex couples in NSW apparently) will never dare drive your car again. FFS.
I haven’t seen the ads, but I have seen a couple of the plates out on the streets recently. One of them was on a car with pink corporate branding, so meh. Other one I’m pretty sure was being driven by a fella.
I just recently finished a book of Scott Fitzgerald short stories. Eight stories, three of them were about young men who find success through unpredictable paths and five were about pretty girls being put in their place. I had no idea his hangups were so… specific. Did everyone else already know this?
I didn’t know this about Scott Fitzgerald, but for some reason it doesn’t at all surprise me.
I didn’t know this about Scott Fitzgerald, but for some reason it doesn’t at all surprise me.
In last week’s Otterday, Jo Tamar recommended a book called “Girt: The unathorised history of Australia” by David Hunt.
I grabbed it from the library and read it over the weekend. I heartily endorse her recommedation. It is hilarious, but underlying that is some serious research. I think he learnt the use of footnotes from Terry Pratchett.
Lauredhel @3 – Yeah, it’s about that level. I’m enduring it because at least at the other end, I get a piece of paper saying I’m capable of showing up at these things, writing down the answers from the screen (no kidding – we get the answers to the assessment questions given to us virtually as dictation), and not murdering the trainer out of sheer frustrated intellectual capacity. Oh, and it says I have the basic skills needed to perform administrative work in today’s employment environment, which is a big plus.
I’ve finished my latest beret at last! Details on http://www.ravelry.com/projects/KittenKnittenKing/slouchy-springtime-beret, it’s an adaptation of a pattern there. I’m pretty pleased with it. Getting berets to sit as wide as I like is the challenge with these things, it means at least two increasing rows after the brim.
Well, I made a right mess out of that, as Eccles would say!
I have a new littlie.
He has a short attention span, needs lots of support and attention to remain engaged in play, a high activity level, very low frustration tolerance, and moves from serenity to extreme distress in a second if he hears the word ‘no’. Responds to frustration with physical aggression. When upset, drops to the ground shrieking, tears rolling from his eyes, distraught: then as soon as the problem is solved, pops up, set for his next inter-action. This happened every 15 minutes or so. I was exhausted after two hours, and it was a 4 hour session.
He greeted his mother by saying “I had the best day ever!”
Childrens. They are funny.
My goodness eilish that sounds like a loooonnnggg four hours. Glad he had such a lovely time though.