Saturday I got a large bundle of photographs from Truprint - 4 sets and a photo CD arrived in the morning, about 3 days early. I went onto campus in the early afternoon to do some work, and then looked at my LUECU 'party by the pond' ticket and realised that it ran from 2 until 6pm and it was 3:30ish, so it would be a good time to go. Liz Murton and Melissa Pearce were there when I got there, and Daffy and Laurie were doing the bungee run. There was five a side football, where people were split into colleges and then people were moved about to make five in each team. My team won their first match and lost their second and so came second place. Our prize was a tub of cadbury heros. After the first match was played, we got food from the barbeque, I had a sausage and a burger.

A bit later the DJ stopped and a speaker spent a few minutes talking about the parable of the rich fool(Luke 12:15-21), and asking people wether they were 'winning the right game'. The DJ seemed to be taking a break, because after that they just stuck a Daftpunk record on. He came back later though.

Afterwards I was invited to go round Laurie, Daffy, Jim and MattB's house to watch a video. Chris A and Jilly chose it, it was Rat Race. We ordered Pizzas and stuff from a fast food place, and while we were waiting for it to arrive, I got my photos out for everyone to look at.
They managed to look through all of them before the food arrived. We ate food and drank wine and then watched the video. It was stupid, shallow and hilarious. And I did like the ending, unlike the reviewer in the link. By the time it had finished it was about 20 to midnight and me and the first years walked up to Bowerham and caught the bus home.

posted at 10:01:00 am

Blogger have without warning improved their service. I have to say I feared the day they would meddle with Blogger because it's so good, but so far the new version is better.

Last night was mission meeting, led by Gill and Nikki. They started by getting us to talk about our stereotypes of certain types of people, and then to discuss in groups the difference between mission and Evangelism, which was pretty much the opposite difference to what I thought it was. It was supposed to go from 6:30 until 8:30 but in practice it ran until about 9:15 because we had a really big discussion. Everyone brought food to share, there was lots of pizza, ice cream and cake, and I brought all my leftover crisps and tortillas, because I've bought far too many during the year. Some people went to the Water Witch and then to Liquid.

posted at 12:09:00 pm

It's uncharacteristically beautiful weather here in Lancaster today, but unfortunately I've had to spend most of today in a computer lab preparing handouts in Latex for my oral presentation on Monday.
posted at 3:42:00 pm

Friday night was the Christian Aid bar crawl. It was supposed to be fancy dress three legged, but in practice nearly everyone was in fancy dress, but noone went three legged. We started at 6:30 and spent 20 to 30 minutes in each bar, and got from Graduate to County. I'm pretty broke by this time in the term, so I couldn't afford to drink much, and no-one got ridiculously drunk or threw up, but I think some people (Jo?) managed a drink in every bar. We carried collection tins round the bars, trying not to get people who were also on bar crawls more than once, and putting in 20p for each drink we had. We raised £164, which is more than last year.

Last night a group of us from Chaplaincy went to Father Steves' in preston for a barbeque. It was however raining, so the food ended up being cooked on a grill indoors, but it was still good. Matt Neville and Melissa brought their photos from this year and we all sat around drinking, talking, eating and looking at photographs. Rui brought some amazingly good port, that went down well, and quickly.
posted at 1:10:00 pm

Went to Rachel, Rachel and Kims last night and watched 'The Sound Of Music' with them. I enjoyed it more than I really expected to.

I was going to buy a blogger T-shirt because they only cost about £5, however once you include shipping and tax they cost about £50, so I think I won't.
posted at 12:31:00 pm

Got my photos back today, even though I gave them the wrong credit card address. They didn't come out particularly wonderfully, but there are some good ones from Clougha and Student Cross.
posted at 4:22:00 pm

Friday:
Did nearly all my work in the 11am lab. I went back had lunch, and got my stuff for retreat. It only took 20 minutes to finish off in the afternoon, so I was back in Chaplaincy in plenty of time to go with the early group, who were setting up and getting salad ready for the barbeque. We went to Abbeystead in the forest of Bowland. There aren't any photos in the Chaplaincy gallery yet, and I haven't got mine developed yet. We did worship outside by the war memorial where Matt Briggs, while playing the guitar was attacked by midges. We had a barbeque on the patio aout side, where Martin Stutzer wasted about 5 cans of Carlsberg by pouring them on the barbeque. Matt Briggs beat Matt Neville at Cambodian stick fighting. I took a ridiculous number of photos. as I photographed nearly all the landscape in the sunshine and then at sunset, and about 6 photos of the Cambodian stick fighting.

In the evening we sat around playing Cluedo, doing a jigsaw, talking and drinking Matt Nevilles Whisky(Bruichladdich if I'm remembering correctly).

Saturday
Remarkably, no one had drunk enough to (have to admit to being?) be hungover at breakfast. We had cornflakes, (imitation) weetabix and fried egg, sausage, baked beans and bacon at breakfast. In the morning, Matt Neville did prayer in the church, using something from student cross, with 5 readers describing the forming of the world, as understood scientifically, as God's creation.
Lunch was basically sandwiches and the salad made for the barbeque.
posted at 1:30:00 pm

Kodak are doing a special offer where you can get 10 free (small) prints. I sent off for them to do some of the photos from the Chaplaincy gallery, I hope they're high enough resolution.
posted at 10:57:00 am

Cathsoc yesterday evening was led by the Christian Fellowship exec., and was on one of the passages were Jesus heals people, I can't even remember which one. By Christian Fellowship exec., I mean Chris Atkinson, Matt Briggs and Helen Whatley, because no-one else from the CF exec. managed to show up.

Afterwards, after some debate we went to Furness bar because it has a beer garden. Well, a patio above the spine between Furness and Fylde. It was also observed that by some coincidence me and Ella were both wearing Cathsoc Tshirts and bright red Cathsoc jumpers, so it appeared I had done a better job of dressing as Ella than Phil did at Matts party. I realise now that I am wearing the same things today, so I hope Ella isn't because I will probably see her at Christian Meditation.

My timetable quite clearly states that I either have a lecture in the A1 lab of Fylde lecture theatre 2 now, but both rooms are empty.

The photos I posted off had the wrong address on the label for the credit card I'm trying to use, so Kodak said they would either print them and then ask for the money back or return my film to me.
posted at 10:18:00 am

I have to do an oral presentation in Math390 now. This must be to make up for last week being easy. I have posted off the film I finished on Clougha.
posted at 11:36:00 am

Walked up Clougha with Christian Fellowship on Thursday evening. It was good weather most of the way up, but at the top, just as Hedley was doing a quick sermon before the Communion it began to rain. It was dry all the way down as well. Partway down we encountered an overly frienfly cat. Not that I don't like cats but it was getting dark and I was trying to get down a hill, and when I tried to walk away from it it darted past me at incredible speed and stopped in front of me wanting to be stroked. I couldn't get rid of it until the people behind me caught up.

Went to Matt Nevilles house party on friday night. It was a crazy evening. I had had two bottles of Becks before I got there and took several with me and carried on drinking it. Phil and Ella had beaten me to it, because they had got off the bus earlier and gone a different way, so the party was starting when I got, there sitting in Matts room chatting. Phil had attempted to dress as Ella, borrowing her favourite shirt. However, he hadn't managed to get his hands on a wig so they attempted to make one from string. It was not terribly convincing. No one realised Phil was meant to be Ella, and Jayne Dickinson thought they must be going out because Phil had borrowed Ellas clothes. There was plenty of drink available, a 5 litre bucket of punch, a barrell of Timothy Taylors, the 'barrel of death', a barrel of bitter, and an unknown quantity of homebrew.

There was music playing in the front room from the start and a few hours in people were dancing quite enthusiastically especially Jayne Dickinson. I spent most of the time with Rachel, Rachel and Kim.
At about 2:30am we went on to the Ashton Memorial, and Matt insisted on taking the barrel of Timothy Taylors, even though it was empty. By the time I got home it was 4am and daylight. I took about 25 photos which should help me to remember more when I get them developed.

I'm on campus blogging this now, because I thought I had a lecture now, but I don't.

On Saturday I got up slightly hungover in the afternoon and eventually went to Asda.

Sunday evening was open house at Gills and we went for a walk by the canal, which was nice, but I didn't take any photos so it will be longer before I finish my film and have my photos of Clougha and Matts party.
posted at 10:19:00 am

Mondays lecture was exceptionally easy, and they basically gave us no work to do, so there was no point in turning up for the afternoon lab. I did my laundry, lounged around a bit and tried my computer just to make sure it still doesn't do anything, and it blatantly doesn't of course.

Math 390 has not turned out to be particularly difficult so far, which is good. We are learning LaTeX which is a mathematics mark up language, it is what you use to type mathematics into a computer to create a document with instead of a word processor. I find it quite easy, having learned to program BASIC on a ZX spectrum aged about 8 I don't find doing things like this on a computer that difficult. I basically have 1 lecture and 1 compulsary lab in the morning, and a two hour lab in the afternoon is available(but not compulsary) ifI need any help. Today I got quite into it and at the end of the compulsary lab went to the john Nelder lab to finish it off for about 45 minutes. I couldn't finish it,so I went and had lunch. After lunch, I went to the afternoon lab and found out what was wrong, and finished it in about half an hour. I was so just getting used to it that I went home, picked out some old homeworks at random and brought them onto campus to type up for practice. When I was in the John Nelder lab doing it, I heard someone say that they had been in there for 3 hours,so I'm guessing that not everyone found it that easy.

Afterwards I went home and quickly had my tea before Cathsoc(so quickly in fact that I was still eating cheese on toast as I walked to the bus stop). At Cathsoc we were doing the laying on of hands, and someone called Katy who had never been before came because she heard them say what it was at the service in the Catholic chapel. We split into two groups and each group sat in a circle with one person in the middle. The person in the middle said how they wanted us to pray for them, i.e. what they wanted us to pray for God to give them, and then we all layed our hands on them. There was quiet Taizé music playing in the background so we couldn't be distracted by what the other group were saying. I really got quite deep into prayer during this. In our group, Stephen Hoyland would indicate we had finished by saying the same thing each time, but I can't remember what that was now. Afterwards, one person would anoint the person in the middles hands and head with oil.

After Cathsoc, we went to County bar and there was an England match on the big screen. It was against Serbia Montenegro, and we won 2-1. We went outside and co-opted Phil Younger onto the Cathsoc exec. Also, I gave Daffy the account book to use to forecast next years expenditure at a meeting we have with LUSU tomorrow.
posted at 10:44:00 pm

Went to Laura Barbers confirmation last night. I had to do the PA. Afterwards, there was free food and wine and a load of us stayed to finish off the wine, and then went to Lonsdale bar. Hence I am slightly hung over this morning and woke up at about 4am. There's still a quarter of an hour until the library opens(not that I have any work to do there yet) three quarters of an hour until morning prayer, and an hour and a quarter until my first MATH390 lecture.
posted at 8:49:00 am