Our Open Thread this weekend is hosted by this otter getting a faceful of water. [Image by otzi1258]
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 had a busy weekend – Saturday was a full day of band rehearsal, and Sunday was a full day of sound mixing. I preferred the band rehearsal.
I had another kiddie birthday – my eldest turned 14. She has recently discovered sushi and not only wanted sushi for dinner, but also a sushi cake (although the sushi cake was her second choice after I refused to make a cake with a meme depicting her current favourite anime character).
One for the Some People Just Don’t Know When To Shut Up file: Moderately well-known Bigfoot debunker Ben Radford, whom most of the world had probably forgotten had been accused last year of sexually harassing coworkers and convention/gathering attendees, has failed to grok the Streisand Effect.[relevant post from HaT archive]
Is it wrong to be annoyed with someone who when looking at extended family holiday options sees and books a cruise for themselves and then tells extended family that there can be no extended family holiday because now they can’t afford it and so everyone has to travel to them at Xmas (which extended family holiday was meant to avoid).
Should I just suck it up and be grateful to be in a position where a) a family holiday is something we can afford and b) something to be looked forward to not dreaded? (Trying but struggling with this)
Mindy, I would be annoyed, if only on behalf of other family members who might not be in such a fortunate position as you. Is there any chance of extended family holiday without cruise-going person, or would that just worsen the situation?
We are the house of lurgies and school holidays atm. Mr angharad and I have both been sick with the cold that will not go away, and my version seems to be mutating into tonsillitis š¦
We are thinking of going to visit the other family members that we would have been seeing anyway. It won’t be somewhere warm, but we will get to see them which is the whole purpose of the exercise anyway. As long as they haven’t already made other plans.
So the NZ Prime Minister, John Key, repeatedly pulled a waitress’s hair over a period of about six months:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/22/new-zealand-prime-minister-john-key-apologises-for-pulling-waitresss-hair
Supposedly “playfully”.
(The waitress did not regard it as “playful”).
In what universe is this ok?
Linked to that Guardian article is another listing ‘crazy things John Key has done’, one of which was wearing a t-shirt proclaiming “I’m not ashamed to be a man” after the opposition leader gave a speech about domestic violence. Sounds like you’ve got a real charmer there, NZ.
Not that we’re doing much better at the moment…
I hope all you Sydney Hoydens are safe and dry, given the wild weather you are having…
I’m dry and safe, and we have had power all through, so have been catching up on Netflix boxsets while staying off the roads. It’s nice to wake up to just breezes rather than big winds this morning. I’ll be out in the garden with the big broom shortly.
And today, the city is looking all washed clean and pretty bloody beautiful in the morning light š
Ending the week with a feelgood: First Dog on the Moon’s “Foster Dogs I Have Known”
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/24/rescue-dogs-fostered-by-first-dog-on-the-moon-a-short-history
(apologies, don’t have time for a full description/transcript, but basically, it is a cartoon showing dogs that First Dog has fostered)
Defying Doomsday reached their funding goal, and is now aiming for $18k to produce an audiobook:
Support the campaign here: http://www.pozible.com/project/188146 , it closes May 1.