These otters, photographed by Michael Randall, are sunning themselves on a rock. Photo from Flickr and used under a creative commons licence.
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 great book? Anything in the news that you’d like to discuss? Commiserations, felicitations, temptations, contemplations, speculations?
Categories: arts & entertainment, Culture, Miscellaneous
Otterday! And Open Thread 
Brief life update: my partner and I are going to be moving soon-ish (at present the “pick up the keys and sign the lease” date for the new place is the 22nd of July – moved back from the previous preference of the 15th). The new place is firstly, closer in to the city than we’re currently living (about 5 – 10 minutes journey depending on traffic, rather than 35 – 45) and secondly, about $35 a week cheaper. This implies precisely what people expect it does – the new place isn’t the best. It’s worth noting the reason our “move in” date has been pushed back by a week is because the owners wanted another week to get some repairs completed. So at present I’m in the middle of packing, deciding what we’re keeping and throwing, and so on. My partner is also involved in this process. Who knows, we may even wind up agreeing on some of the “throw out” pile.
At least part of the fun of moving into this new place is that it’s an older place, with fewer rooms (but mostly larger ones) than the unit we’re currently living in. We’re planning on moving me into the main lounge room as my bedroom (because it has the [electric] heater in there), while my partner has plans to be taking the back bedroom for his own. Meanwhile, the other front bedroom is going to be turned into a storage, and possibly media, space (as in, it’s where we’re tentatively planning to put my TV and my two game consoles, as well as the couch).
The garden space of this house was, when we inspected it, one huge mass of soursob, in which a couple of trees, one rosebush and a rather optimistic freesia (I think – it was a bulby thing of some sort, anyway) were struggling to survive. Which means my gardening instincts are busy revving up for a bit of exercise – one of the great things about this is firstly, I can use my cheap as chips weeding technique to its fullest (pour boiling water over the weeds – this works excellently for weeds in paving) without worrying I’m going to hurt anything significant, and secondly, it’s a great opportunity for really going to town on getting things growing.
I hope the owners taking another week to do repairs is a good sign for both the house and the landlords.
Oh, so do I, although I do suspect there’s a certain component of “The Gas Man Cometh” in there, where the repairs one person completed led to another person having to come in and do something else. My primary worry is that the laundry (which is an outside laundry, that’s how old the house is) has a trough, taps suitable to connect a washing machine to, and a working power supply by the time we move in – it didn’t have a trough when we ran our first inspection before signing the option form. After that… well, I’m hoping the roof doesn’t leak. But I suspect one of my early purchases in this house is going to be about a dozen gross of “door snakes” – draught excluders.
Door snakes are an excellent investment. Our state government here in SA ran a program to help pensioners keep their heating bills down by, amongst other measures, distributing door snakes. It was apparently very successful, but was nonetheless laughed out of both parliament and the mainstream media, leading to the program’s abandonment. I have noted recent advertising for double sided door snakes, that slide with the door and don’t need repositioning every time the door is opened or closed.
I have my first head cold for this winter. I don’t like it.
I hope it is on it’s way now Viv.
I can sleep in tomorrow. What’s the bet I wake up at 5am and can’t go back to sleep?