(no subject)
Fresher's week is over! Thank Goodness!
At least having a pagan sock (knitted by Rose) kept me somewhat entertained - basically any spare minute I had, I was in the Freshers' Tent and generally at the stand. Sometimes if I was taking a break (and someone was on the stand, I'd take a wander and sign up to other socs - either because I had a genuine interest, wanted to support the cause, or I liked the auditor (or in the case of Retro Soc- I liked one particular committee member... *dreamy smile*).
Anyway, the pagan sock - it was a particularly bad pun on pagansoc. Despite Rose's initial protestations that the sock was in fact crap, it was incredibly cool. Yes, it was only a tube of knitting with the top sewn together. But it meant that one of the corners made a perfect little nose, and the other could be tucked in to make a mouth - SO MUCH BETTER THAN A REAL SOCK! Once it had eyes, it took on a life of its own.
It's amazing how good you can get at animating a sock puppet when you're on the stand for a number of hours each day. It's amazingly entertaining. I managed to break a Gom because I had him singing along to a song today. This whole lip-sync thing gets kinda natural after some practice... as a result I now have an idea of putting some grubby yellow wool on the sock's head and some felt with the nirvana smilie on it and have it sing to Smells Like Teen Spirit. He could do a good Kobain impression. I may also want a sock-sized shotgun, just for kicks.
Anyway, in the end we got 68 members which isn't quite what we got last year (104 at the end of Fresher's week last year), but the week was also REALLY slow. It was packed on Monday, claustrophobically packed, and it died down for the rest of the week. Which gave me time to work on my puppetry.
Now, the societies officer, Richard Butler, decided that we should have a religious quarter of the tent - so that meant that 4 out of the 5 active religious societies (there's Jewish Soc but they haven't been active for the last 2 years) were in the same area in the tent. That would be Pagan Soc, the Christian Union, The Living Stones (Multicultural Christian Society) and Youth 2000 (Not entirely sure how to describe them - but predominantly Catholic) all in one place.
To be honest, the Christian Union were lovely. Actually I kept being reminded of http://www.whywiccanssuck.com/xtian.html - mainly because of what the Living Stones tried to pull. A guy from the stand came over and said "Here, if you fill out this survey you get free cookies". Me being the type who was trying to avoid sugar, but wanting to build up good relations with other socs, I filled it out. Naturally enough it had one or two questions about God... So I had to ask "Is this God in the Christian sense or in a general sense of Deity?" - Big mistake. It gave him a reason to rant on about how by not accepting God (in his sense) we were hurting him, that we should turn away from how we live and so forth. I didn't appreciate the attempt at conversion... only because I don't set out to convert people.
On the other hand, the CU offered us tea and cake on the first day. They were nice.
And today, they did something that made my freaking week.
THEY CHALLENGED US TO PAINTBALL!
I couldn't believe it when I heard it. I wanted to challenge them last year... and I got reports that they were up for it. But now it's been laid on the table. *grin* Come the new year, there will be fun. There will be fun. And paint.
At least having a pagan sock (knitted by Rose) kept me somewhat entertained - basically any spare minute I had, I was in the Freshers' Tent and generally at the stand. Sometimes if I was taking a break (and someone was on the stand, I'd take a wander and sign up to other socs - either because I had a genuine interest, wanted to support the cause, or I liked the auditor (or in the case of Retro Soc- I liked one particular committee member... *dreamy smile*).
Anyway, the pagan sock - it was a particularly bad pun on pagansoc. Despite Rose's initial protestations that the sock was in fact crap, it was incredibly cool. Yes, it was only a tube of knitting with the top sewn together. But it meant that one of the corners made a perfect little nose, and the other could be tucked in to make a mouth - SO MUCH BETTER THAN A REAL SOCK! Once it had eyes, it took on a life of its own.
It's amazing how good you can get at animating a sock puppet when you're on the stand for a number of hours each day. It's amazingly entertaining. I managed to break a Gom because I had him singing along to a song today. This whole lip-sync thing gets kinda natural after some practice... as a result I now have an idea of putting some grubby yellow wool on the sock's head and some felt with the nirvana smilie on it and have it sing to Smells Like Teen Spirit. He could do a good Kobain impression. I may also want a sock-sized shotgun, just for kicks.
Anyway, in the end we got 68 members which isn't quite what we got last year (104 at the end of Fresher's week last year), but the week was also REALLY slow. It was packed on Monday, claustrophobically packed, and it died down for the rest of the week. Which gave me time to work on my puppetry.
Now, the societies officer, Richard Butler, decided that we should have a religious quarter of the tent - so that meant that 4 out of the 5 active religious societies (there's Jewish Soc but they haven't been active for the last 2 years) were in the same area in the tent. That would be Pagan Soc, the Christian Union, The Living Stones (Multicultural Christian Society) and Youth 2000 (Not entirely sure how to describe them - but predominantly Catholic) all in one place.
To be honest, the Christian Union were lovely. Actually I kept being reminded of http://www.whywiccanssuck.com/xtian.html - mainly because of what the Living Stones tried to pull. A guy from the stand came over and said "Here, if you fill out this survey you get free cookies". Me being the type who was trying to avoid sugar, but wanting to build up good relations with other socs, I filled it out. Naturally enough it had one or two questions about God... So I had to ask "Is this God in the Christian sense or in a general sense of Deity?" - Big mistake. It gave him a reason to rant on about how by not accepting God (in his sense) we were hurting him, that we should turn away from how we live and so forth. I didn't appreciate the attempt at conversion... only because I don't set out to convert people.
On the other hand, the CU offered us tea and cake on the first day. They were nice.
And today, they did something that made my freaking week.
THEY CHALLENGED US TO PAINTBALL!
I couldn't believe it when I heard it. I wanted to challenge them last year... and I got reports that they were up for it. But now it's been laid on the table. *grin* Come the new year, there will be fun. There will be fun. And paint.