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Summary: I did lots of work. The Internet went away and came back. There was a small amount of surreality. I did even more spod.
The boring details:
Tue 15th:
Very tired. Almost impossible to drag self out of bed, but I did anyway. I'm not sure why, because this lecture here is worse than useless, especially when I have no brain, and everything still kind of hurts. Got some Internet and hence worked out exactly what was happening for project meeting (utter disorganisation, but some people are meeting in The Cow so I should go there) and printed out What We Need To Do so that we can plan things and then call people. Forgot to pack any food or money, so cadged a pound off Matthew and bought a flapjack and a Nutrigrain with it, but only ate the former.
Ran off after lectures to get to The Cow for 1:30pm; halfway down Adams Road my phone went, and it was Jagex. Said that I couldn't really get my diary out right now, they asked if I could ring them back, I said 'about 4pm', and they said that would be fine. Carried on to The Cow; nobody was there. (Well, actually many people were there, the place was packed out, but nobody from the group.) Phoned a number that I thought was probably Ali due to its position on my Recent Calls list, got an answerphone, left a message, headed to Phoenix to check emails in case the meeting had been cancelled in the meantime.
Outside Phoenix, phone rang again - it was Ali saying that he'd found other people outside The Cow. Got back and lots of us were standing around; we did go in and found a table downstairs, and then one upstairs. People discussed stuff, and we have everything almost worked out such that we might have something to show on Tuesday possibly.
Asim couldn't find anyone who would split the cost of two pizzas (it being two-for-one day), so he just ordered two. Then he said that someone really ought to eat some of the second one and nobody else wanted to, so my free food reflexes kicked in and I accidentally ate half a pizza before I remembered that pizzas had tomatoes and tomatoes are bad for me. I didn't suffer too badly for it - just a bit of stomach-hatred quite a lot later - but still.
After that, well, I had no money so I couldn't do any shopping, so I went straight back to Churchill. The Internet was working again, which inspired me to much spod, and sending a couple of emails about typos in the course notes. Ate in Hall, then returned to Teh Spod, then went to sleep.
Mon 14th:
Woke up at 8am and spent lots of time half-dreaming; I now know how to continue all my Portal games if everyone hasn't left and I get around to it. Got up at 8:30am. Found out that the group meeting was being rearranged, which suited me. Read lots of LJ and Portal stuff.
First lecture went completely over my head. Was hungry, so bought some Nutri-Grains (tried the Cherry flavour, but it's still not anywhere near as nice as Apple). There weren't any notes hanging around for the second, but it was still fun. Must update lecturer quotes sometime. And there were pretty colours and paint.
After lectures, I spodded vaguely, and then wandered off to my Semantics supervision, in which we discovered that what we had been going 'uh' about was very easy indeed and the notes were just useless.
We overran slightly, which wasn't too awful, especially as when I got back to my room, the Internet was dead. This was kind of irritating as I had a lot of stuff to do, but on the other hand it did mean I got to do my laundry and have a shower and brush my hair, all of which desperately needed doing. Then I went to Hall, and then Nicholas eventually managed to coax me out of my room and send me off to Ark, which was good and contained chocolate roll and the Happiness Information Desk (The scenario was 'information desk at a train station', I was behind the desk, I had the line "Excuse me, but could you tell me where the train station is?", so it kind of got surreal after that). Stopped off at Phoenix for a few minutes to check my emails. Afer Ark I did make the mistake of waiting up and playing with the Internet which was back in a very slow manner, which meant I didn't get to sleep until after midnight.
Sun 13th:
Woke up in time for church but failed to actually go; fell asleep again instead, waking up about 12:30pm and wandering vaguely Hall-wards. Took too much food and discovered that I really don't like cold mushroom quiche. Was invited over by (Claire?) from Cell to sit with them, but declined as I'd basically finished, and then wandered off.
Attempted to do supervision work, but didn't possess a brain, which made it rather difficult. Built a couple of 16th-level D&D characters to decompress in between trying to understand the course (Semantics of Programming Languages, which is complicated and full of symbols). Nicholas showed up to drag me to Chapel, which was actually quite good, if slightly disjointed in sermon. I liked the reading from Ecclesiasticus (the one in the Apocrapha): loosely paraphrased, "I have put before every man fire and water, life and death", and the words of the songs although the singing was in Dire Church Style despite the choir (the organ was a little anemic and none of the songs appeared to have a tune; the anthem the choir sung was traditional choir-singing in that I couldn't hear the words, and the organ music in the lead-out that were were obviously meant to politely sit through made my head not work).
After Chapel, we ate some food in Hall (they still can't cook scampi properly - mine had raw bits again) and then trailed back to my room, where I failed to do any work, rang Alex to reply to his text asking for pub quiz answers because my phone still wants to send text messages in Japanese, learned that Nicholas was still disorganised over his PhD and tried to organise him, and then got very stressed and ranty about needing to get work done and LaTeX not working right for putting pictures in. Nicholas got it working for me and quietly left me to it, and I got something approaching work done. Then there was a little spodding, and then I went to sleep about 11pm.
Sat 12th:
Spent the morning moaning and trying to fall asleep again, before giving up at about 11:30am and driving to Oblivion. Nicholas and I collected food orders and went off to get lunch and snacks. We got too many snacks, but they were yummy snacks.
Ate lunch: expensive goats' cheese that wasn't actually that nice and Baravian Smoked cheese that was very nice, and standard brown bread of being slightly stale despite being freshly bought.
Hung around vaguely spodding and watching people shoot JFK (Rob had got the game for a fiver). Edith asked everyone, especially those who weren't playing, what they wanted to happen in the session. There was some desultory spodding, and letting people in and collapsing at Nicholas, and then we decided it was session time and wandered back through to the kitchen. Koryne had kitty ears for her 'I'm an otter now' flag.
The session happened pretty much as in the session reports, with the addition of playing a Deacon in the church, attempting to clear the churchyard of weeds (bindweed, rather an anachronism I fear) and occasionally being forced to agree with the priest on the matter of burying possible demon-worshippers in the churchyard. Eventually, he was bribed, which my deacon was suitibly scathing of, especially because it meant he wouldn't get to plant his nastersiums (*so* not spelt correctly).
After Covenants, we had to go to Marika's for food; the food was very nice, but unfortunately Matthew was doing his Unexploded Matthew act, and so it was a little tense at times. We did have great fun burning things (grapes, orange peel, grape stalks), until I almost set fire to everything by leaning three used matchsticks in one of the candle holders, which made quite an impressive fire.
We talked of random stuff for quite a while after eating, and then Nicholas asked for permission to wash up, and I followed him out, and Matthew started talking about Stuff, so I was glad I had left.
When we'd finished the dishes, the door was half-closed and there were low voices from inside so we didn't really know what to do, but thankfully it wasn't too long until the others came out of the room to go away, so we could leave gracefully.
Unfortunately, instead of going straight home like we should have done, we went to join the LARPer party, and then got very tired there, and then stumbled home about 1am, and then I was rather wrecked in the morning. There were cute athletic rats and kitty ears and sleeping people, though.
Fri 11th:
I have no idea what I did in the afternoon, or if anything interesting happened in the morning.
Because of the Spring Ball, and using Valentine's Day as an excuse, we went out for food in the evening, to Bangkok City. I had lots of random seafood in oyster sauce and egg fried rice, which was very good, and melon icecream for dessert, which was marvellous. Nicholas had a thing with rice and curry paste which was a bit too hot and a rather smaller fudgy icecream thing for dessert. We ended up talking as if we were our Covenants characters in order to keep the conversation going, for quite some time. It was entertaining.
We were going to go back to Oblivion afterwards because of loud Ball music and needing to be there tomorrow anyway, but then I was very tired and didn't feel up to walking or driving, so I just went to sleep.
Thur 10th:
Dentist appointment at 2:30pm. Over quite quickly. Cost £12.32 because I had an X-ray. Dentist complemented me on my stunningly clean teeth, which was a surprise as I haven't exactly been looking after them perfectly. Got fruit on the way home.
Cell at 7pm. We talked about lots of stuff we could do. I was meant to email the webmaster to see about getting a Religion forum, but they haven't replied. We're also praying for the Churchill Cafe.
Wed 9th:
Enemy. Lots of plot happened, which left us in a Deathlord's citidel, 'captives' but not held very well. Lucinda makes the Black Flagstones of Cliched Evil into the Black Flagstones of Hello Kitty Cuteness.
Tue 8th:
There were some lectures in the morning. I don't think anything noteworthy occurred.
How Not to Give a Presentation was vaguely entertaining, but nothing that I didn't know. The organisational stuff might prove vaguely useful, but I don't know it will. The group meeting we were meant to be having afterwards almost failed, because most of the group hadn't turned up to the lecture, but eventually everyone except Ali was gathered together, and I'd already briefed Ali on what he needed to do. Once everyone was together the meeting went well; everyone was assigned tasks, some people discussed common interfaces, and it didn't last too long.
I'm sure I did something inbetween these events, but I now have no idea what it was, because I lost the first version of this entry. I know that I decided not to go into town because I didn't have my credit card with me, so I suspect the answer is 'spod'.
Pancake Games Evening. Pancake count: one banana and pineapple, one pineapple and chocolate. Pineapple doesn't go with chocolate. I should have had pineapple and cheese like I originally planned, but I asked for chocolate and someone melted it for me so it would have been churlish not to use it. Actually managed to talk to people because I stood around in the kitchen with the pancake-cooking, but I don't know what I talked about. Then I played one game of Purto Rico, where I went for a building strategy and came second of three, and one game of Settlers of Catan, where I didn't have much strategy beyond 'balanced resources and longest road good, oh and look at my nice 3:1 port', and won.
It was quite late by then, so I rang Nicholas to find out where he was, as he'd said that he'd come to Games Evening after CTS. It turned out that CTS had ended late enough that he assumed I'd gone to sleep, so he went home and went to sleep instead of, you know, *checking*. I was very irritated, especially when he didn't immediately apologise and come to walk me home, but insisted on faffing about lunch. Eventually I ended up at Oblivion because for some obscure reason he was happier to cycle to Chu and get my medicine than walk me home. I didn't get to sleep very early, although I did get to read quite a bit of the CLC anthology, which was good.
Mon 7th:
9am got up
9:50am dragged self into lectures, eating breakfast slice of bread
10:05am wandered into lecture which hadn't quite got round to starting yet
11:00am had to change lecture theatres
12:00noon and again
1:00pm went and sat upstairs to eat lunch.
1:30pm finished sitting around and eating, went to Intel Lab to do work. First had to clear out email and also spodded a bit before setting down.
4:40pm finally finished work.
5:20pm left lab, handed in work.
5:40pm got back to room.
5:55pm went to Hall.
6:45pm left Hall. Spodded (making Portal characters).
11:10pm extracted self from computer. Started reading Exalted books for no good reason.
11:45pm eventually put book away and went to sleep.
Sun 6th:
11:30am: finally drag self out of bed. Start doing spec.
1:15pm: decide it's about time for lunch. Go and eat lunch.
1:30pm: get back from lunch, poke at spec some more.
2pm: Finish spec, email out to people. Then deal with Redgate application and TAP application in basically 0 time. Then spod.
6:10pm: Decide that I need to go to Hall now in order to be ready outside at 7:10pm.
6:45pm: Get back from Hall, feeling rather defeated. Ring Nicholas and whine at him. He hasn't eaten yet.
7:10pm: Wander out to meet people despite threats that I might not.
7:20pm: Finally set off for Queens'.
7:30pm: Take off gloves, put in pockets, instantly lose one.
7:35pm: Nicholas phones me to work out what route we're taking so he can meet us.
7:40pm: Met by Nicholas on Queens' Road, whilst talking about him. Oops.
7:50pm: Finally make it to Queens, only about five minutes late.
7:55pm: Finally make it to the chapel, almost by two different routes simultaneously as running between two halves of the party both convinced that their way to the chapel was best.
8pm: People finish setting up the chapel so we can actually make it in.
8pm-10pm: Church. It makes me cry a lot because it's exhorting us to love the unlovable, and I feel tremendously guilty about not doing enough Good Stuff in general recently, and they play a Lauren Hill song designed to make everyone feel guilty (the refrain is "You may win some, but you just lost one") and fail to play a clip from The Passion Of The Christ, although we do get to see some gore while they flail around looking for it. Then there is a section on meekness which starts that we might have too much self-esteem (not me!) and then goes on to say that the result of not having too much self-esteem should not be worrying that we're awful but it should be not worrying what people think of us (which of course is most of why I feel guilty).
Then they play The Saddest Song Ever ("I will wait here at the cross"), which causes me to weep uncontrollably, and then a song I can agree with only three lines in (the rest making God sound like Superman / pretending He only likes new things not old ones / generally irritating me, although actually it served to calm me down). We then discuss the next song we sing, which I quite like except for one line (calling God 'dad', having been taught that's disrespectful to call a mortal father, let alone God) but Nicholas objects to another line in (he doesn't like the words 'love song' because he thinks of soppy things; we decide that I don't mind it mostly because I am soppy). There was also (in the sermon, near the start) a mention of the Tolkein Society as an Uncool Thing which might contain Unlovable People, which Nicholas and I were most amused by.
Then there was lots of prayer for various groups of people (highlights included the homeless, international students, tourists, drinking societies, sports societies, people with depression (which I was surprised that Nicholas still didn't really understand), and several others I can't remember).
10pm Afterwards Marika asks me how I was, so I had to tell her. Nicholas goes to help carry PA things around, although I have to help him with crowd-moving. There is some argument over who is going to the pub, but I am selfish and insist that Nicholas comes home with me and tries to find my missing glove.
10:30pm: We go home, quite slowly. I stop against the locked gate to Johns' sports ground and look at the branches; Nicholas walks off to the corner, then puts on his bike stuff. I make vague morbid attempts to injure myself with a nearby holly bush and walk out in front of cars, whilst noting how beautiful everything is in the half-light, but fail to be able to cause myself pain or inconvenience road users. Nicholas shows up to inform me he's going home, and I admit I was attention-seeking, and couldn't stop because then I would fail every time I tried in the future.
11:10pm We finally got back to my room. No glove was in evidence.
11:30pm I fell asleep.
Sat 5th:
9am: Was woken up by Nicholas arriving with breakfast.
10am: Finally managed to extract myself from my room in order to walk to Eden Baptist.
10:30am: Arrived on time for the XF Reunion; nobody appeared to be there, but I phoned Margeret and apparently she'd just forgotten to tell us to use the side door.
There were quite a few people there and I talked to Neil across the room (there were no pairs of free seats near him). We had a girl that Jon Cooper brought along as well as Nicholas for new team, so we did an icebreaker thing where we said two true and one 'I don't like the word lie, so, um, an untruth' things about ourselves and our name, and everyone had to guess which one was untrue. I can't even remember all of mine: the untrue one was "I have more than one kettle lead" and the last true one was "I was on the winning team in InterVarsity Poohsticks" because Neil had said he was going to use that one but couldn't remember if he'd actually been on the team or not. There was a lot of nargery about grade 7 vs grade 8 things in some people's 'untruths'.
After that we ate biscuits and geeked for a bit, which was fun. Then we were shown a rather cringeworthy SU recruitment video, and attempted to get some things from the camp CD working but it was the first version where the video didn't work and the computer we were using didn't have Quicktime anyway and kept crashing.
Then Margret went and cooked pizza, and there was some more chatting; she came back and told us to pray for each other in pairs, so I prayed with Helen and Nicholas got one of the cooks. After that she set off the fire alarm, which was entertaining because the Chinese Christian Fellowship were also meeting in the building.
Eventually we got pizza; Margeret came and spoke to us for a short time but was very busy, and then Fiona (when she came back from fetching her own meal because pizzas have cheese on) spoke to us for a longer time, although mostly to me.
After pizza we headed in the direction of the bowling place, getting quite lost and wandering in spirals because Neil and I were in front and didn't know where we were going, but just kept walking very fast because we were talking about Fusion. When we got to the bowling place, after exclaiming about the Worst Building Evah (the Travelodge by the Junction) we discovered that it was very loud, had flashing lights and was smokey. So Nicholas and I ran away.
We went to town and Nicholas bought a couple of things he needed; I thought about getting cheese and fruit but didn't. (sitting down outside the Senate House and synchronising schedules)
4pm: when we were meant to go back to the church to meet everyone, but they weren't there; so we phoned lots of poohsoc people until
4:15pm: we found one and went to poohsoc instead.
4:45pm: Arrived at Naath's room where Poohsoc was; Nicholas ran off to do more postscript.
6:45pm: Poohsoc finally disbanded (it had been good, highlights being Jack's rather disturbingly badly shaved head and Alison in general), and I walked home fairly quickly but just too slow to either make it to Hall or catch Nicholas.
I think the rest of the evening can be summarised by 'collapse and spod'.
Fri 4th:
Spent lectures colouring in a dull geometric pattern thing, and also much time after lectures whilst eating lunch (the pate had all fallen out of my pate sandwich and the jelly tasted like it had gone off). Didn't get out of the lab until about 2:40pm.
Marika came to visit at 3:15pm, and apologised for being late, so I said she wasn't by the correct measure of time (Cambridge = 5 minutes late; Christians = 5 minutes late; charismatic = 5 minutes late); we chatted about theology (how the mystical theologians she had been reading had been going on about how you couldn't know God because he's, well, God, but that also you could know God, at least in bits, but you had to accept you couldn't before you could, which was all very confusing) and Cambridge in general until she suddenly realised it was 4:30pm and she ought to be elsewhere. I managed to remind her to do something she needed to, so I felt useful.
Failed to go to TT because I couldn't motivate myself to leave my room. Still didn't go to sleep that early.
Thur 3rd:
There were lectures, but there was a gap in them, during which I wrote some stuff about a baby being born into a barbarian tribe, due to having read the Lunars book too much.
There was some Group Project stuff. It went tolerably well, and caused me to write Why I Am A Manager.
Cell Formal; ate food and spoke almost exclusively to Matthew and Nicholas. Have better writeup of it in my GAIM logs, if I can be bothered to extract it.
Wed 2nd:
There were some lectures in the morning. I have no idea what I did in them.
I'm sure there was an afternoon, but its contents are lost to me.
Enemy in the evening; we made lots of elaborate plans, Lucinda discussed the importance of stories and the possibilities inherant in destroying the stone they were after with Adar, and we gave Jade an oppertunity to create an excellent story about how she once impersonated an Abyssal so the Wyld Hunt had something to kill, which calmed them down. In return she gave Lucinda and Amyra some lovely gossamer armour which came with a Heart grace, and Adar a ring which came with a Heart and a Ring grace, so he can now do level 1 Ring shaping, Amyra and I have shapeshifting armour of lightness, and Amyra has terminally bad luck from offending the Maidens. Lucinda is very happy with her armour, although she is a little jealous of Adar's new powers.
Tue 1st:
I cannot remember doing anything particularly interesting apart from almost missing my CS&A supervision through being engrossed in Teh Spod. I was meant to be running around doing Group Project stuff like a loon, but didn't on account of nobody sending anything relevant to me. I discovered by a phone call at about 11:45pm that this was because I hadn't sent stuff to people. Oops.
So, uhm, that's the month so far. Now my long-delayed period is due, so I should be Great Fun for the next few days...
The boring details:
Tue 15th:
Very tired. Almost impossible to drag self out of bed, but I did anyway. I'm not sure why, because this lecture here is worse than useless, especially when I have no brain, and everything still kind of hurts. Got some Internet and hence worked out exactly what was happening for project meeting (utter disorganisation, but some people are meeting in The Cow so I should go there) and printed out What We Need To Do so that we can plan things and then call people. Forgot to pack any food or money, so cadged a pound off Matthew and bought a flapjack and a Nutrigrain with it, but only ate the former.
Ran off after lectures to get to The Cow for 1:30pm; halfway down Adams Road my phone went, and it was Jagex. Said that I couldn't really get my diary out right now, they asked if I could ring them back, I said 'about 4pm', and they said that would be fine. Carried on to The Cow; nobody was there. (Well, actually many people were there, the place was packed out, but nobody from the group.) Phoned a number that I thought was probably Ali due to its position on my Recent Calls list, got an answerphone, left a message, headed to Phoenix to check emails in case the meeting had been cancelled in the meantime.
Outside Phoenix, phone rang again - it was Ali saying that he'd found other people outside The Cow. Got back and lots of us were standing around; we did go in and found a table downstairs, and then one upstairs. People discussed stuff, and we have everything almost worked out such that we might have something to show on Tuesday possibly.
Asim couldn't find anyone who would split the cost of two pizzas (it being two-for-one day), so he just ordered two. Then he said that someone really ought to eat some of the second one and nobody else wanted to, so my free food reflexes kicked in and I accidentally ate half a pizza before I remembered that pizzas had tomatoes and tomatoes are bad for me. I didn't suffer too badly for it - just a bit of stomach-hatred quite a lot later - but still.
After that, well, I had no money so I couldn't do any shopping, so I went straight back to Churchill. The Internet was working again, which inspired me to much spod, and sending a couple of emails about typos in the course notes. Ate in Hall, then returned to Teh Spod, then went to sleep.
Mon 14th:
Woke up at 8am and spent lots of time half-dreaming; I now know how to continue all my Portal games if everyone hasn't left and I get around to it. Got up at 8:30am. Found out that the group meeting was being rearranged, which suited me. Read lots of LJ and Portal stuff.
First lecture went completely over my head. Was hungry, so bought some Nutri-Grains (tried the Cherry flavour, but it's still not anywhere near as nice as Apple). There weren't any notes hanging around for the second, but it was still fun. Must update lecturer quotes sometime. And there were pretty colours and paint.
After lectures, I spodded vaguely, and then wandered off to my Semantics supervision, in which we discovered that what we had been going 'uh' about was very easy indeed and the notes were just useless.
We overran slightly, which wasn't too awful, especially as when I got back to my room, the Internet was dead. This was kind of irritating as I had a lot of stuff to do, but on the other hand it did mean I got to do my laundry and have a shower and brush my hair, all of which desperately needed doing. Then I went to Hall, and then Nicholas eventually managed to coax me out of my room and send me off to Ark, which was good and contained chocolate roll and the Happiness Information Desk (The scenario was 'information desk at a train station', I was behind the desk, I had the line "Excuse me, but could you tell me where the train station is?", so it kind of got surreal after that). Stopped off at Phoenix for a few minutes to check my emails. Afer Ark I did make the mistake of waiting up and playing with the Internet which was back in a very slow manner, which meant I didn't get to sleep until after midnight.
Sun 13th:
Woke up in time for church but failed to actually go; fell asleep again instead, waking up about 12:30pm and wandering vaguely Hall-wards. Took too much food and discovered that I really don't like cold mushroom quiche. Was invited over by (Claire?) from Cell to sit with them, but declined as I'd basically finished, and then wandered off.
Attempted to do supervision work, but didn't possess a brain, which made it rather difficult. Built a couple of 16th-level D&D characters to decompress in between trying to understand the course (Semantics of Programming Languages, which is complicated and full of symbols). Nicholas showed up to drag me to Chapel, which was actually quite good, if slightly disjointed in sermon. I liked the reading from Ecclesiasticus (the one in the Apocrapha): loosely paraphrased, "I have put before every man fire and water, life and death", and the words of the songs although the singing was in Dire Church Style despite the choir (the organ was a little anemic and none of the songs appeared to have a tune; the anthem the choir sung was traditional choir-singing in that I couldn't hear the words, and the organ music in the lead-out that were were obviously meant to politely sit through made my head not work).
After Chapel, we ate some food in Hall (they still can't cook scampi properly - mine had raw bits again) and then trailed back to my room, where I failed to do any work, rang Alex to reply to his text asking for pub quiz answers because my phone still wants to send text messages in Japanese, learned that Nicholas was still disorganised over his PhD and tried to organise him, and then got very stressed and ranty about needing to get work done and LaTeX not working right for putting pictures in. Nicholas got it working for me and quietly left me to it, and I got something approaching work done. Then there was a little spodding, and then I went to sleep about 11pm.
Sat 12th:
Spent the morning moaning and trying to fall asleep again, before giving up at about 11:30am and driving to Oblivion. Nicholas and I collected food orders and went off to get lunch and snacks. We got too many snacks, but they were yummy snacks.
Ate lunch: expensive goats' cheese that wasn't actually that nice and Baravian Smoked cheese that was very nice, and standard brown bread of being slightly stale despite being freshly bought.
Hung around vaguely spodding and watching people shoot JFK (Rob had got the game for a fiver). Edith asked everyone, especially those who weren't playing, what they wanted to happen in the session. There was some desultory spodding, and letting people in and collapsing at Nicholas, and then we decided it was session time and wandered back through to the kitchen. Koryne had kitty ears for her 'I'm an otter now' flag.
The session happened pretty much as in the session reports, with the addition of playing a Deacon in the church, attempting to clear the churchyard of weeds (bindweed, rather an anachronism I fear) and occasionally being forced to agree with the priest on the matter of burying possible demon-worshippers in the churchyard. Eventually, he was bribed, which my deacon was suitibly scathing of, especially because it meant he wouldn't get to plant his nastersiums (*so* not spelt correctly).
After Covenants, we had to go to Marika's for food; the food was very nice, but unfortunately Matthew was doing his Unexploded Matthew act, and so it was a little tense at times. We did have great fun burning things (grapes, orange peel, grape stalks), until I almost set fire to everything by leaning three used matchsticks in one of the candle holders, which made quite an impressive fire.
We talked of random stuff for quite a while after eating, and then Nicholas asked for permission to wash up, and I followed him out, and Matthew started talking about Stuff, so I was glad I had left.
When we'd finished the dishes, the door was half-closed and there were low voices from inside so we didn't really know what to do, but thankfully it wasn't too long until the others came out of the room to go away, so we could leave gracefully.
Unfortunately, instead of going straight home like we should have done, we went to join the LARPer party, and then got very tired there, and then stumbled home about 1am, and then I was rather wrecked in the morning. There were cute athletic rats and kitty ears and sleeping people, though.
Fri 11th:
I have no idea what I did in the afternoon, or if anything interesting happened in the morning.
Because of the Spring Ball, and using Valentine's Day as an excuse, we went out for food in the evening, to Bangkok City. I had lots of random seafood in oyster sauce and egg fried rice, which was very good, and melon icecream for dessert, which was marvellous. Nicholas had a thing with rice and curry paste which was a bit too hot and a rather smaller fudgy icecream thing for dessert. We ended up talking as if we were our Covenants characters in order to keep the conversation going, for quite some time. It was entertaining.
We were going to go back to Oblivion afterwards because of loud Ball music and needing to be there tomorrow anyway, but then I was very tired and didn't feel up to walking or driving, so I just went to sleep.
Thur 10th:
Dentist appointment at 2:30pm. Over quite quickly. Cost £12.32 because I had an X-ray. Dentist complemented me on my stunningly clean teeth, which was a surprise as I haven't exactly been looking after them perfectly. Got fruit on the way home.
Cell at 7pm. We talked about lots of stuff we could do. I was meant to email the webmaster to see about getting a Religion forum, but they haven't replied. We're also praying for the Churchill Cafe.
Wed 9th:
Enemy. Lots of plot happened, which left us in a Deathlord's citidel, 'captives' but not held very well. Lucinda makes the Black Flagstones of Cliched Evil into the Black Flagstones of Hello Kitty Cuteness.
Tue 8th:
There were some lectures in the morning. I don't think anything noteworthy occurred.
How Not to Give a Presentation was vaguely entertaining, but nothing that I didn't know. The organisational stuff might prove vaguely useful, but I don't know it will. The group meeting we were meant to be having afterwards almost failed, because most of the group hadn't turned up to the lecture, but eventually everyone except Ali was gathered together, and I'd already briefed Ali on what he needed to do. Once everyone was together the meeting went well; everyone was assigned tasks, some people discussed common interfaces, and it didn't last too long.
I'm sure I did something inbetween these events, but I now have no idea what it was, because I lost the first version of this entry. I know that I decided not to go into town because I didn't have my credit card with me, so I suspect the answer is 'spod'.
Pancake Games Evening. Pancake count: one banana and pineapple, one pineapple and chocolate. Pineapple doesn't go with chocolate. I should have had pineapple and cheese like I originally planned, but I asked for chocolate and someone melted it for me so it would have been churlish not to use it. Actually managed to talk to people because I stood around in the kitchen with the pancake-cooking, but I don't know what I talked about. Then I played one game of Purto Rico, where I went for a building strategy and came second of three, and one game of Settlers of Catan, where I didn't have much strategy beyond 'balanced resources and longest road good, oh and look at my nice 3:1 port', and won.
It was quite late by then, so I rang Nicholas to find out where he was, as he'd said that he'd come to Games Evening after CTS. It turned out that CTS had ended late enough that he assumed I'd gone to sleep, so he went home and went to sleep instead of, you know, *checking*. I was very irritated, especially when he didn't immediately apologise and come to walk me home, but insisted on faffing about lunch. Eventually I ended up at Oblivion because for some obscure reason he was happier to cycle to Chu and get my medicine than walk me home. I didn't get to sleep very early, although I did get to read quite a bit of the CLC anthology, which was good.
Mon 7th:
9am got up
9:50am dragged self into lectures, eating breakfast slice of bread
10:05am wandered into lecture which hadn't quite got round to starting yet
11:00am had to change lecture theatres
12:00noon and again
1:00pm went and sat upstairs to eat lunch.
1:30pm finished sitting around and eating, went to Intel Lab to do work. First had to clear out email and also spodded a bit before setting down.
4:40pm finally finished work.
5:20pm left lab, handed in work.
5:40pm got back to room.
5:55pm went to Hall.
6:45pm left Hall. Spodded (making Portal characters).
11:10pm extracted self from computer. Started reading Exalted books for no good reason.
11:45pm eventually put book away and went to sleep.
Sun 6th:
11:30am: finally drag self out of bed. Start doing spec.
1:15pm: decide it's about time for lunch. Go and eat lunch.
1:30pm: get back from lunch, poke at spec some more.
2pm: Finish spec, email out to people. Then deal with Redgate application and TAP application in basically 0 time. Then spod.
6:10pm: Decide that I need to go to Hall now in order to be ready outside at 7:10pm.
6:45pm: Get back from Hall, feeling rather defeated. Ring Nicholas and whine at him. He hasn't eaten yet.
7:10pm: Wander out to meet people despite threats that I might not.
7:20pm: Finally set off for Queens'.
7:30pm: Take off gloves, put in pockets, instantly lose one.
7:35pm: Nicholas phones me to work out what route we're taking so he can meet us.
7:40pm: Met by Nicholas on Queens' Road, whilst talking about him. Oops.
7:50pm: Finally make it to Queens, only about five minutes late.
7:55pm: Finally make it to the chapel, almost by two different routes simultaneously as running between two halves of the party both convinced that their way to the chapel was best.
8pm: People finish setting up the chapel so we can actually make it in.
8pm-10pm: Church. It makes me cry a lot because it's exhorting us to love the unlovable, and I feel tremendously guilty about not doing enough Good Stuff in general recently, and they play a Lauren Hill song designed to make everyone feel guilty (the refrain is "You may win some, but you just lost one") and fail to play a clip from The Passion Of The Christ, although we do get to see some gore while they flail around looking for it. Then there is a section on meekness which starts that we might have too much self-esteem (not me!) and then goes on to say that the result of not having too much self-esteem should not be worrying that we're awful but it should be not worrying what people think of us (which of course is most of why I feel guilty).
Then they play The Saddest Song Ever ("I will wait here at the cross"), which causes me to weep uncontrollably, and then a song I can agree with only three lines in (the rest making God sound like Superman / pretending He only likes new things not old ones / generally irritating me, although actually it served to calm me down). We then discuss the next song we sing, which I quite like except for one line (calling God 'dad', having been taught that's disrespectful to call a mortal father, let alone God) but Nicholas objects to another line in (he doesn't like the words 'love song' because he thinks of soppy things; we decide that I don't mind it mostly because I am soppy). There was also (in the sermon, near the start) a mention of the Tolkein Society as an Uncool Thing which might contain Unlovable People, which Nicholas and I were most amused by.
Then there was lots of prayer for various groups of people (highlights included the homeless, international students, tourists, drinking societies, sports societies, people with depression (which I was surprised that Nicholas still didn't really understand), and several others I can't remember).
10pm Afterwards Marika asks me how I was, so I had to tell her. Nicholas goes to help carry PA things around, although I have to help him with crowd-moving. There is some argument over who is going to the pub, but I am selfish and insist that Nicholas comes home with me and tries to find my missing glove.
10:30pm: We go home, quite slowly. I stop against the locked gate to Johns' sports ground and look at the branches; Nicholas walks off to the corner, then puts on his bike stuff. I make vague morbid attempts to injure myself with a nearby holly bush and walk out in front of cars, whilst noting how beautiful everything is in the half-light, but fail to be able to cause myself pain or inconvenience road users. Nicholas shows up to inform me he's going home, and I admit I was attention-seeking, and couldn't stop because then I would fail every time I tried in the future.
11:10pm We finally got back to my room. No glove was in evidence.
11:30pm I fell asleep.
Sat 5th:
9am: Was woken up by Nicholas arriving with breakfast.
10am: Finally managed to extract myself from my room in order to walk to Eden Baptist.
10:30am: Arrived on time for the XF Reunion; nobody appeared to be there, but I phoned Margeret and apparently she'd just forgotten to tell us to use the side door.
There were quite a few people there and I talked to Neil across the room (there were no pairs of free seats near him). We had a girl that Jon Cooper brought along as well as Nicholas for new team, so we did an icebreaker thing where we said two true and one 'I don't like the word lie, so, um, an untruth' things about ourselves and our name, and everyone had to guess which one was untrue. I can't even remember all of mine: the untrue one was "I have more than one kettle lead" and the last true one was "I was on the winning team in InterVarsity Poohsticks" because Neil had said he was going to use that one but couldn't remember if he'd actually been on the team or not. There was a lot of nargery about grade 7 vs grade 8 things in some people's 'untruths'.
After that we ate biscuits and geeked for a bit, which was fun. Then we were shown a rather cringeworthy SU recruitment video, and attempted to get some things from the camp CD working but it was the first version where the video didn't work and the computer we were using didn't have Quicktime anyway and kept crashing.
Then Margret went and cooked pizza, and there was some more chatting; she came back and told us to pray for each other in pairs, so I prayed with Helen and Nicholas got one of the cooks. After that she set off the fire alarm, which was entertaining because the Chinese Christian Fellowship were also meeting in the building.
Eventually we got pizza; Margeret came and spoke to us for a short time but was very busy, and then Fiona (when she came back from fetching her own meal because pizzas have cheese on) spoke to us for a longer time, although mostly to me.
After pizza we headed in the direction of the bowling place, getting quite lost and wandering in spirals because Neil and I were in front and didn't know where we were going, but just kept walking very fast because we were talking about Fusion. When we got to the bowling place, after exclaiming about the Worst Building Evah (the Travelodge by the Junction) we discovered that it was very loud, had flashing lights and was smokey. So Nicholas and I ran away.
We went to town and Nicholas bought a couple of things he needed; I thought about getting cheese and fruit but didn't. (sitting down outside the Senate House and synchronising schedules)
4pm: when we were meant to go back to the church to meet everyone, but they weren't there; so we phoned lots of poohsoc people until
4:15pm: we found one and went to poohsoc instead.
4:45pm: Arrived at Naath's room where Poohsoc was; Nicholas ran off to do more postscript.
6:45pm: Poohsoc finally disbanded (it had been good, highlights being Jack's rather disturbingly badly shaved head and Alison in general), and I walked home fairly quickly but just too slow to either make it to Hall or catch Nicholas.
I think the rest of the evening can be summarised by 'collapse and spod'.
Fri 4th:
Spent lectures colouring in a dull geometric pattern thing, and also much time after lectures whilst eating lunch (the pate had all fallen out of my pate sandwich and the jelly tasted like it had gone off). Didn't get out of the lab until about 2:40pm.
Marika came to visit at 3:15pm, and apologised for being late, so I said she wasn't by the correct measure of time (Cambridge = 5 minutes late; Christians = 5 minutes late; charismatic = 5 minutes late); we chatted about theology (how the mystical theologians she had been reading had been going on about how you couldn't know God because he's, well, God, but that also you could know God, at least in bits, but you had to accept you couldn't before you could, which was all very confusing) and Cambridge in general until she suddenly realised it was 4:30pm and she ought to be elsewhere. I managed to remind her to do something she needed to, so I felt useful.
Failed to go to TT because I couldn't motivate myself to leave my room. Still didn't go to sleep that early.
Thur 3rd:
There were lectures, but there was a gap in them, during which I wrote some stuff about a baby being born into a barbarian tribe, due to having read the Lunars book too much.
There was some Group Project stuff. It went tolerably well, and caused me to write Why I Am A Manager.
Cell Formal; ate food and spoke almost exclusively to Matthew and Nicholas. Have better writeup of it in my GAIM logs, if I can be bothered to extract it.
Wed 2nd:
There were some lectures in the morning. I have no idea what I did in them.
I'm sure there was an afternoon, but its contents are lost to me.
Enemy in the evening; we made lots of elaborate plans, Lucinda discussed the importance of stories and the possibilities inherant in destroying the stone they were after with Adar, and we gave Jade an oppertunity to create an excellent story about how she once impersonated an Abyssal so the Wyld Hunt had something to kill, which calmed them down. In return she gave Lucinda and Amyra some lovely gossamer armour which came with a Heart grace, and Adar a ring which came with a Heart and a Ring grace, so he can now do level 1 Ring shaping, Amyra and I have shapeshifting armour of lightness, and Amyra has terminally bad luck from offending the Maidens. Lucinda is very happy with her armour, although she is a little jealous of Adar's new powers.
Tue 1st:
I cannot remember doing anything particularly interesting apart from almost missing my CS&A supervision through being engrossed in Teh Spod. I was meant to be running around doing Group Project stuff like a loon, but didn't on account of nobody sending anything relevant to me. I discovered by a phone call at about 11:45pm that this was because I hadn't sent stuff to people. Oops.
So, uhm, that's the month so far. Now my long-delayed period is due, so I should be Great Fun for the next few days...
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no subject
Date: 2005-02-16 02:58 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2005-02-16 03:17 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2005-02-16 05:39 pm (UTC)From:The music in Chapel was having an off week - we normally manage a nicer anthem and at least one decent hymn *mutters*. But I feel it's the style you were objecting to rather than the actual stuff which went on, to which all I can say is 'each to their own'.
And yes, the reading was nice. I don't normally get the chance to read, cause everyone else likes doing it (as opposed to the intercessory prayers, which nobody wants to do, ever).
no subject
Date: 2005-02-16 06:02 pm (UTC)From:On the other hand, the organ music at the end did almost drive me insane, so perhaps I do just dislike organ music. Although not knowing if I was allowed to get up and talk to people didn't help; I could have coped with it in the background, but it was making my brain hurt as a foreground activity.
I was going to say something about the sermon being a little confused, but a) it was a guest speaker, b) the sermons at CLC are generally far more confused and c) there are very few sermons that I've heard that I haven't flagged either 'confused' or 'obvious'. And I did get the feeling that I wanted to pay a return visit, although unfortunately this week CLC have decided to meet in the evening again.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-25 10:38 pm (UTC)From: