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enismirdalFirst, thanks to various people who wished me a happy birthday (in spite of my attempts to hide all evidence of the event...), congratulated me on various good newses and were generally supportive - I am too inept to track down all the posts and thank you personally, but I wanted to let you know that it was very sweet of you! *HUGS*
Next... I need to write up Puntmoot on Sunday. Which was good!!
I managed to avoid burning, impressively. For one thing, I made myself a Pope hat from the Sunday Times in order to keep the sun off my parting, which worked very well, so my head escaped burning. And I was in my long sleeved coxing
T-shirt (not too precious - in case I fell in) so my arms were happy too.
There were lots of cool things. We saw a grass snake swimming across the river!!!! That was very exciting. There were also many, many dragonflies and damselflies, that landed on our hats and legs and things and were pretty.
There were two punt races happening. These can apparently get rather...dramatic...but luckily this bunch were a good lot, and respected that people who were not participating in the race were, quite simply, not participating, and so we didn't get soaked, attacked or otherwise assaulted. One of the punts rammed another into the bank, and the rammed party managed to break their punt pole. They then sent out two swimmers to steal the punt pole off the rammers. Two people in the water versus six on the boat...and the swimmers managed to steal the pole!
But all in all it was a nice day. Some of the old members turned up, which was fun. There was scary geeky coalbiting-type-stuff involving a Dutch translation of The Silmarillion. Then MHF showed us a new game. It's called "Fox in Socks or Prince of
Denmark". It involves reading random quotes that come from either Fox in Socks or Hamlet, and everyone has to guess which one it came from. This is rather fun, as it seems logical to deduce from the fact that Fox in Socks seems to be in Iambic Pentameter that it is most definitely Hamlet. Or something. It was very odd!
On the other hand, I wore a Pope hat to Grantchester and back.
The food was nummy and there was lots of it (BEAN SALAD!!). Thank you to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
beckyc, naath and sonicdrift for food and organisation-type Stuff. Hooray!!! Pimm's was a very good idea overall.
There was a minor hitch with punts that resulted in me attempting (unsuccessfully) to hire Kate, the St Catharine's College punt. The Scuddies people gave me blank looks and didn't know what I was on about... When was the last time someone took her out? Where is she kept anyway?
Most memorably, I realised my life ambition of seeing someone bridge-hop the Fen Causeway bridge!!! I had always dreamed of seeing this done. (I even wrote a fic in which Glorfindel did it - no, I will not elaborate...). But I never thought I'd actually see it.
He piled all the cushions up on the front of the punt, then leaped, got finger-holds, pulled himself up, dashed through the traffic, and did indeed lower himself down on the far side. And didn't die or land in the water.
We applauded VERY loudly. We were highly admiring.
Wowness.
Other things:
By the way, did I ever mention thatedith_the_hutt is a fabulous cook?
Next... I need to write up Puntmoot on Sunday. Which was good!!
I managed to avoid burning, impressively. For one thing, I made myself a Pope hat from the Sunday Times in order to keep the sun off my parting, which worked very well, so my head escaped burning. And I was in my long sleeved coxing
T-shirt (not too precious - in case I fell in) so my arms were happy too.
There were lots of cool things. We saw a grass snake swimming across the river!!!! That was very exciting. There were also many, many dragonflies and damselflies, that landed on our hats and legs and things and were pretty.
There were two punt races happening. These can apparently get rather...dramatic...but luckily this bunch were a good lot, and respected that people who were not participating in the race were, quite simply, not participating, and so we didn't get soaked, attacked or otherwise assaulted. One of the punts rammed another into the bank, and the rammed party managed to break their punt pole. They then sent out two swimmers to steal the punt pole off the rammers. Two people in the water versus six on the boat...and the swimmers managed to steal the pole!
But all in all it was a nice day. Some of the old members turned up, which was fun. There was scary geeky coalbiting-type-stuff involving a Dutch translation of The Silmarillion. Then MHF showed us a new game. It's called "Fox in Socks or Prince of
Denmark". It involves reading random quotes that come from either Fox in Socks or Hamlet, and everyone has to guess which one it came from. This is rather fun, as it seems logical to deduce from the fact that Fox in Socks seems to be in Iambic Pentameter that it is most definitely Hamlet. Or something. It was very odd!
On the other hand, I wore a Pope hat to Grantchester and back.
The food was nummy and there was lots of it (BEAN SALAD!!). Thank you to
beckyc, naath and sonicdrift for food and organisation-type Stuff. Hooray!!! Pimm's was a very good idea overall.There was a minor hitch with punts that resulted in me attempting (unsuccessfully) to hire Kate, the St Catharine's College punt. The Scuddies people gave me blank looks and didn't know what I was on about... When was the last time someone took her out? Where is she kept anyway?
Most memorably, I realised my life ambition of seeing someone bridge-hop the Fen Causeway bridge!!! I had always dreamed of seeing this done. (I even wrote a fic in which Glorfindel did it - no, I will not elaborate...). But I never thought I'd actually see it.
He piled all the cushions up on the front of the punt, then leaped, got finger-holds, pulled himself up, dashed through the traffic, and did indeed lower himself down on the far side. And didn't die or land in the water.
We applauded VERY loudly. We were highly admiring.
Wowness.
Other things:
- I am trying to learn Dvorak. This is a long and tiring process. Having the vowels in a seemingly random and counter-intuitive order doesn't help. I'm having to learn more or less by rote where they are. But my fingers definitely travel less and the home-row optimisation is a good plan. If I was designing it, I'd swap the "u" and "r" keys, however. My ambition is to be bilingual in QWERTY and Dvorak. Most of this post was typed in QWERTY for speed, but I switched to Dvorak in places for practice. So ner.
- Yesterday was amusing. I ended up with two donor carers and the attending sister gathered round me cheering me on! They hooked me up to the blood-collecting thing, by my blood flow rate was reeeeally slow initially, so the carer twiddled the needle (OW), then the sister came over and twiddled it more gently, and they were about to give up cos I'd never have filled the bag in time. But then the sister showed me a different hand-squeezing technique, and between then and the end of the donation, my flow rate increased by a factor of 4, and I not only put the minimum 410ml into the bag, I managed to get all the way up to the normal 470ml weight. Go me!
- Today I sat in a field and did writing, which was nice.
- My bumblebee conservation trust pack arrived, with a magazine, a poster, a window-sticker, a pin-badge and a personally signed letter from one of the admins. Yay!
- ford_of_bruinen, keiliss and tuxedo_elf are ALL offline at the moment, and I'm missing them like crazy.
- Tomorrow, I'm escaping the Evil that is Catz May Ball and crashing at Abner's place, which will be 1. cheaper and 2. infininitely more fun and less annoying, and doesn't require me to dress up. Huzzah! (I hope those of you who actually enjoy May Balls and are attending them have a lovely time, but not my thing, alas!)
By the way, did I ever mention that
edith_the_hutt is a fabulous cook?
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no subject
Date: 20 Jun 2006 19:24 (UTC)no subject
Date: 20 Jun 2006 19:31 (UTC)I always feel a bit awkward making big general thank yous to my LJ Flist like that! Cos I don't *expect* comments/banners/posts off anyone, but when people do I feel like I should make some acknowledgement, but at the same time I don't want to give out the impression that anyone is obliged to say anything - as I noted, I was trying to hide my birthday anyway. Which lasted...about until Tux and Nellas got wind of it... *grin*
no subject
Date: 21 Jun 2006 11:00 (UTC)no subject
Date: 20 Jun 2006 20:40 (UTC)no subject
Date: 20 Jun 2006 21:02 (UTC)I really don't think I can not-revert :) - I spend so long chatting and writing and stuff that if I tried to stick to Dvorak for IM conversations, no one would talk to me any more cos it would be so slow! *grin* And I would rather not take 2 hours to update LJ. I am definitely better each time I try; it's the vowels killing my brain more than the punctuation, really. I might end up remapping o and e the other way around, actually - I think my brain would prefer that!
I'm definitely going with the "some stuff every day" approach - treating it a bit like learning a foreign language. It's certainly as tiring as that French exchange I did when I was 14!
Thanks for the tips!
no subject
Date: 20 Jun 2006 21:29 (UTC)I used CD marker pen and it's mostely rubbed off except for on the obscure punctuation - keyboards aren't very good for remaining written on.
I wouldn't swap things arround again - you'll get used to the vowel positions eventually.
no subject
Date: 20 Jun 2006 21:08 (UTC)Abner
no subject
Date: 20 Jun 2006 21:39 (UTC)I'm normally OK - I think this time the donor carer just did a bad job of putting the needle in. The sister seemed to think it was interfering with one of the valves.
no subject
Date: 21 Jun 2006 00:48 (UTC)no subject
Date: 21 Jun 2006 08:44 (UTC)no subject
Date: 21 Jun 2006 08:47 (UTC)I am so hopeless.
But I'm cute!
no subject
Date: 21 Jun 2006 08:51 (UTC)no subject
Date: 21 Jun 2006 08:53 (UTC)no subject
Date: 21 Jun 2006 09:12 (UTC)As in...
Gosh is that the time? It's Pimms o'clock.
no subject
Date: 21 Jun 2006 09:49 (UTC)no subject
Date: 21 Jun 2006 13:26 (UTC)Dvorak is called Dvorak because it was the surname of the person who invented it, which is not the same Dvorak as the guy who wrote Symphony for the New World.