080615-050715 (2015 Weeks 17-20)
Well, it looks like the weekly updates went well. Anyway, here’s a diary entry for the past four (yeah, they kind of crept up on me) weeks. I’m going to just do this vaguely in chronological order, to keep things simple.
CULES Formal - great fun. It’s been too long since I went to a formal and I didn’t really go to enough of them while a student. Hopefully there will be a few more. It helped that it was at Hughes Hall, which is a grad/mature student college, so I didn’t feel like I was just much older than the rest of the guests.
The Sci Comm social seemed like a good start for the event, and it was good to both see friends and meet new people, but it did feel a little aimless. Hopefully future events will have a bit more focus and people demonstrating something that they are working on.
J visited and we mostly had a relaxing weekend which was a nice contrast to the camping a fortnight earlier, as well as the May Ball on the Friday evening. J had to let herself in with the set of keys I’d given her, which does feel wonderfully couply :). Her parents also came around for dinner, and we had a good meal courtesy of the slow cooker. It’s a shame the Bailey’s and cream biscuit cake didn’t set, but putting it into the freezer sorted that out!
The COGGLES shows were great. I mostly remembered my lines (apart from one time where I accidentally stole someone else’s line, oops) and it all seemed to go well. It was nice to get a card from the director at the end too. The post student performance pub was good despite me having to dash off to perform at Selwyn ball. I did manage to rejoin the party afterwards, dragging along another friend. They don’t seem to go on quite as late as they used to - mainly because I think there are more of us who know we need to work during the week.
Robinson May Ball was great to perform at and it was fun to actually attend a ball again. The main band that we heard, the Sunset Sons, were good and I really should remember to listen to more of their stuff. The jazz group “Colonel Spanky’s Love Ensemble” (no, I don’t know either) were good too, and very danceable to. All in all, a nice ball, but not one that stood out massively compared to others I’ve been to. Our set was good, despite us clearly flagging towards the end, and seemed to attract really good numbers. In fact the Impronauts seemed to attract good numbers at all the balls that I did (Wolfson probably much fewer than Robinson and Selwyn). I did feel a bit sorry for the other acts at Selwyn, given some people were clearly there to see us and so didn’t pay much attention to the act before or stay for the act after. It’s good to know we can pull a crowd like that though.
Scouts training was mostly dull, a few useful things in there to do with planning programmes and keeping the Scouts interested though. Also luckily it didn’t get in the way of the COGGLES show because I was the only person there on the Saturday, meaning that we could whizz through everything relatively quickly.
I finally managed to run another episode of Sci Cam! Not sure anyone really watched it though - I know my parents missed it for starters. It’s really irritating that I feel that we’re putting out some good stuff that isn’t getting an audience - for some reason our audience dropped away quickly over a few months last year and I still don’t know why. This has led to me putting less effort into making sure we had an episode each month which obviously hasn’t helped, but the drop in audience predates that. Any ideas for what we can do to build the audience up again?
Mum and Dad came and stayed at my flat overnight (for the first time!) so that Dad could help me do some DIY jobs around the flat. It was really good to see them - I think I’ve been appreciating them more over the past few years but as I’ve spent so many weekends with J I’ve not seen them as much as I would like. Thanks to Dad (and no-thanks to the metal that we couldn’t drill into just above the middle of the window in one room) I finally have curtains up in two rooms, and curtain poles ready in the living room for when J makes some curtains. We also managed to put up a bathroom cabinet, attach handles to the wardrobes (as I was too worried to do this on my own -this seems to be a common theme with me and DIY) and buy a new set of steps which were useful for putting up the curtains. On Saturday we also managed to go punting, which was good too. The lamb with feta that I cooked in the slow cooker went down amazingly well (even if Dad thought there was slightly too much feta). The slow cooker generally seems to be an easy way of making great food, so I’m glad J suggested we bought the recipe book that this meal came from.
This week I managed to see J again, this time presenting at the Royal Society Summer Science exhibition in London. It’s always good to see her being enthusiastic about Physics (this being a big thing we have in common :) ) and getting to laze about in the park outside in the sun was a plus too. Then I headed up to see her at the weekend, and we met up with my parents to go around the gardens at Chatsworth House, something my Mum had been telling us we should go and do for about the past two years. The weather was glorious and despite the walking tour promised on a sign turning out to be entirely fictional we spent longer there than we expected. The picnic that J and I brought went down well, the place was generally nice and walking through the was brilliant; Mum and Dad even went in. Then over to Bakewell for dinner, and sitting outside a nice restaurant where we got some greek sharers and pizza (and probably could have coped without the pizzas which we ordered as I was expecting the sharers to be smaller, oops). A really lovely day, and I even managed to drive J and me back to Sheffield in her car without any hairy moments despite not having driven it before. The rest of the weekend was mostly spent watching the extras on the Festival of the Spoken Nerd DVD together - but that’s the topic of another blog post.
CULES Formal - great fun. It’s been too long since I went to a formal and I didn’t really go to enough of them while a student. Hopefully there will be a few more. It helped that it was at Hughes Hall, which is a grad/mature student college, so I didn’t feel like I was just much older than the rest of the guests.
The Sci Comm social seemed like a good start for the event, and it was good to both see friends and meet new people, but it did feel a little aimless. Hopefully future events will have a bit more focus and people demonstrating something that they are working on.
J visited and we mostly had a relaxing weekend which was a nice contrast to the camping a fortnight earlier, as well as the May Ball on the Friday evening. J had to let herself in with the set of keys I’d given her, which does feel wonderfully couply :). Her parents also came around for dinner, and we had a good meal courtesy of the slow cooker. It’s a shame the Bailey’s and cream biscuit cake didn’t set, but putting it into the freezer sorted that out!
The COGGLES shows were great. I mostly remembered my lines (apart from one time where I accidentally stole someone else’s line, oops) and it all seemed to go well. It was nice to get a card from the director at the end too. The post student performance pub was good despite me having to dash off to perform at Selwyn ball. I did manage to rejoin the party afterwards, dragging along another friend. They don’t seem to go on quite as late as they used to - mainly because I think there are more of us who know we need to work during the week.
Robinson May Ball was great to perform at and it was fun to actually attend a ball again. The main band that we heard, the Sunset Sons, were good and I really should remember to listen to more of their stuff. The jazz group “Colonel Spanky’s Love Ensemble” (no, I don’t know either) were good too, and very danceable to. All in all, a nice ball, but not one that stood out massively compared to others I’ve been to. Our set was good, despite us clearly flagging towards the end, and seemed to attract really good numbers. In fact the Impronauts seemed to attract good numbers at all the balls that I did (Wolfson probably much fewer than Robinson and Selwyn). I did feel a bit sorry for the other acts at Selwyn, given some people were clearly there to see us and so didn’t pay much attention to the act before or stay for the act after. It’s good to know we can pull a crowd like that though.
Scouts training was mostly dull, a few useful things in there to do with planning programmes and keeping the Scouts interested though. Also luckily it didn’t get in the way of the COGGLES show because I was the only person there on the Saturday, meaning that we could whizz through everything relatively quickly.
I finally managed to run another episode of Sci Cam! Not sure anyone really watched it though - I know my parents missed it for starters. It’s really irritating that I feel that we’re putting out some good stuff that isn’t getting an audience - for some reason our audience dropped away quickly over a few months last year and I still don’t know why. This has led to me putting less effort into making sure we had an episode each month which obviously hasn’t helped, but the drop in audience predates that. Any ideas for what we can do to build the audience up again?
Mum and Dad came and stayed at my flat overnight (for the first time!) so that Dad could help me do some DIY jobs around the flat. It was really good to see them - I think I’ve been appreciating them more over the past few years but as I’ve spent so many weekends with J I’ve not seen them as much as I would like. Thanks to Dad (and no-thanks to the metal that we couldn’t drill into just above the middle of the window in one room) I finally have curtains up in two rooms, and curtain poles ready in the living room for when J makes some curtains. We also managed to put up a bathroom cabinet, attach handles to the wardrobes (as I was too worried to do this on my own -this seems to be a common theme with me and DIY) and buy a new set of steps which were useful for putting up the curtains. On Saturday we also managed to go punting, which was good too. The lamb with feta that I cooked in the slow cooker went down amazingly well (even if Dad thought there was slightly too much feta). The slow cooker generally seems to be an easy way of making great food, so I’m glad J suggested we bought the recipe book that this meal came from.
This week I managed to see J again, this time presenting at the Royal Society Summer Science exhibition in London. It’s always good to see her being enthusiastic about Physics (this being a big thing we have in common :) ) and getting to laze about in the park outside in the sun was a plus too. Then I headed up to see her at the weekend, and we met up with my parents to go around the gardens at Chatsworth House, something my Mum had been telling us we should go and do for about the past two years. The weather was glorious and despite the walking tour promised on a sign turning out to be entirely fictional we spent longer there than we expected. The picnic that J and I brought went down well, the place was generally nice and walking through the was brilliant; Mum and Dad even went in. Then over to Bakewell for dinner, and sitting outside a nice restaurant where we got some greek sharers and pizza (and probably could have coped without the pizzas which we ordered as I was expecting the sharers to be smaller, oops). A really lovely day, and I even managed to drive J and me back to Sheffield in her car without any hairy moments despite not having driven it before. The rest of the weekend was mostly spent watching the extras on the Festival of the Spoken Nerd DVD together - but that’s the topic of another blog post.