This weekend’s Open Thread is hosted by this swimming otter, snapped at Wildpark Pforzheim by Cloudtail.
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?
Please note – no Doctor Who spoilers. Thanks.
Categories: Life
Soggy here, innit? 
In memoriam: Diana Rigg 
Getting out the ‘yes’ 
100 books by women in 2016 
Hoyden About Town 
It’s 5.50am, and I’ve been having a lovely night… not. One (or more) of the various groups of neighbours has been socialising and talking since about 7pm last night… non-stop. They’re still going even now. Unfortunately I don’t know which one, and given our location, it could be any of about a dozen places. No prizes for guessing who had a night of very interrupted sleep as a result.
Today is going to be a coffee day.
Unfortunately, I can’t have the coffee right now, because I have to wait two hours between taking my medication (thyroxine) and having dairy products, calcium supplements, iron supplements and similar. It’s a recent thing – presumably the lab changed the formula a bit, or they discovered some new interaction or something – and while I’ve mostly adapted to it (alarm on the computer telling me when it’s safe to have these things) on occasion it does get just a little annoying.
Well yesterday was interesting. My laptop fizzed out with no low power warning, and I was trying to work out why, and I unplugged it from the power supply just as I realised that that the power supply was plugged into a socket that was not switched on. I switched it on and BAM, our circuit breaker turned the whole house off. Unplugged power supply, went out to fusebox and re-engaged circuit breaker to turn house back on, then spent yesterday wondering WTF just happened. Checking the power supply again this morning, I noticed there seems to be a break in its terminal plug of the sort one gets when somebody steps on it (grrrr). So, I guess today I’ll go and get a new one. This should be quite a lot cheaper than getting a whole new laptop, although I confess I’d just started to look forward to that idea. Harrumph.
Is anyone suspiciously limping TT?
Okay, I’ll admit it, ’twas me. ;P
My knee has been playing up since before the Hoyden get-together pre-Christmas, and it ain’t getting any better. I now have to go see the doctor. Hummpph.
Why did you break my laptop, Aphie? (she sez while nonchalantly attempting to hide the not-getting of Mindy’s suspiciously-limping reference).
Anyway, my brilliant beloved did some sort of turning-it-off-and-turning-it-on-again thing with the power supply, and laptop is now back to normal. Since the whole reboot-backup-and-reboot-again thing it’s not even overheating any more. Yay.
Perennial New Year question: why don’t the UK Glenister acting brothers ever do anything together? They appear simultaneously on red carpets looking reasonably civil and even cheerful sometimes, so why don’t they ever do a show together?
The more I watch How to train your Dragon 2, the more I wonder if someone let an “MRA” on the writing team.
This is how you identify the culprit who stepped/tripped on your power supply ?
We’re off work this week, so I find myself in the land of every day feeling like it’s Sunday. Today my baby was at daycare, so I had the added discombobulation of there only being one child when I do a head count. Meanwhile the baby is now in the older baby nursery, so she’s passed her first marker of getting big. In six months time I believe she is promoted again to being a tiny tot. Then, I guess, a higher degree in the blink of an eye.
D’oh.
Anybody going out to watch fireworks anywhere? We might go to our favourite tall carpark to catch the 9pm ones in the distance (from the less fashionable side of the Harbour bridge) and then head home, but only maybe. We used to do it every year when the kids were smaller, but they’re so big now it’s really not that exciting.
We ended up going hobbiting and then to a Mexican place for cheesy meaty yummos followed by churros with chocolate dipping sauce. Now home watching the British Big Quiz Of The Year. We’ll watch the fireworks on the telly maybe.
In an ongoing week of bad sleep, last night I got woken up at about 4.15 in the morning by the heat. Today it was 3.45, and it was a combination of leg cramps and needing to pee. Both times I couldn’t get back to sleep again, mainly due to the traffic on the major road behind our place starting up around 4am (the neighbours had some more people over last night, and one of them decided to leave at about 4.15am… this is getting to be a theme). So I’m currently running on about eight hours sleep over the last two nights, and I’m not looking forward to lots of sleep tonight, either.
Time to crack out the coffee, again. At least the housework is getting done early.
I hope 2015 brings better sleep for you Megpie.
Anyone interested in doing a read-along of Robin Hobb’s Soldier Son trilogy in the new year?
From what I remember, plenty of racism, colonialism, fat bias and sexism highlighted, to discuss.
Sounds intriguing, Aphie.
#FeministNewYearResolutions
Mindy, so do I. Mind you, lately I’ve been catching afternoon naps (or napping after my mid-morning meal or whatever) to try and catch up with things. Himself goes back to work on Monday, which means I’m back to a 5.30am start (have to get my shower in before his, and be ready to drop him off at the train station around 7.00am). Mind you, I can live with that – at least I’ll be getting back to a regular routine again.
I am cyber following rescue dogs which I would like to adopt. This seems to mean that within a day or two they have been adopted by someone else. This is both good and bad.
Someone gave the Mr. a beer making kit for Christmas.
It was going to be kept in the garage.
No, it’s going to live in our downstairs open plan kitchen-living room-dining room to maintain an even temperature.
I am so happy.
Thanks Santa. Next year you will be given a parrot that sings the ‘Bob Jane T-mart’ song.
Eilish: Easy fixed by putting a non-working fridge in the garage for the brew vat to live in. TA-DAH.
Lauredhel, you are brilliant.
We happen to have non-working fridges all over the family.
eilish: you might need a heater belt for the vat in winter, but away you go! *bows*
Oh dear, I knew this was going to be bad.
*sigh*
http://www.themarysue.com/romeo-and-juliet-correction/
Fascinating theory! I won’t comment further, as I know more than a few Hoydens are way more familiar with Shakespeare than I, but I like this one better than the usual “star-crossed lovers” idea.
Hello everyone, I’ve been very busy weaving lots and watching an embarrassing amount of Supernatural on Netflix.
eilish, our beer vats tend to live in the lounge room, which I can cope with, but the mead on top of the chest of drawers in my bedroom was a step too far.
Lauredhel, if there was any space in our garage I’d be searching for a non-working fridge right now.
I don’t agree at all with the idea we are supposed to dislike Romeo: though I am very interested in the notion “where shall we dine?” packs more of a punch than I thought. I too dislike the ‘star-crossed’ thing – nope, it’s about what happens when you transgress societal rules.
R&J, for me, is about the conflict between following your own desires and following the rules of the society you live in. R&J cannot live after they transgress the rule that says they must live under the control of their fathers.
R’s plight is interesting because duelling is actually an accepted social behaviour, while killing people in a duel isn’t. Tricky to negotiate that one. Mercutio is killed under Romeo’s arm, when Romeo tries to avoid a conflict. He’s caught: damned if he duels, damned if he doesn’t.
Juliet marries in secret: second biggest transgression she can commit. It’s not the loss of her virginity that’s the problem, it’s she can’t have two husbands. I’ve always wondered what would have happened to her if she had spilled to her dad: banished to a convent?
All of Shakespeare’s heroes are flawed: they are impulsive and selfish and unaware. That’s why we are still interested in his plays after all this time. That, and they are such beautiful poetry.
I have been able to negotiate the beer to the laundry: Mimbles, you are a much kinder person than I.
Update on the conflict I have with my colleague: mediation date set. The mediator is hopeful we can come to an agreement, having spoken to my colleague.
I keep on trying to write something coherent about Scott Aaronson’s infamous comment 171 and the aftermath, but I’m getting bogged down. Maybe it’s easier to just throw it open to the winds here on Otterday?
Maybe if all those who’ve been following the fallout post links to their favourite posts (eta: including a really useful summary would be tops), and then I just put together a linkaround post?
So, Crikey’s Daily Review email seeks to entice me into clicking through to read “Razer vs herself.com”. Yeah nah mate.
Hi tigtog, I have been following the Scott Aaronson stuff a bit. I liked Amanda Marcotte’s response at Pandagon (on phone, so no linky) for sheer snarky frustration relief, but Miri at FTB wrote a couple of thoughtful posts about the role women are expected to take in managing men’s feelings. Dr Nerdlove had a crack at this too, but what I got most from that was the commenter who pointed out several times that the really problematic thing with Comment 171 was that it was a massive derail in a post that was actually about a professor who had been sacked for sexually harassing his students.
I had a look at Aronsen’s blog, too.
He keeps saying ‘I support feminism, but it stopped me from having a good life’.
It’s hard to properly respond and deconstruct what he’s saying when you’re throwing your hands in the air and saying “OMG, this bullshit again?! What?! ” and walking away from the computer for a minute to calm down.
So many things to retort.