HEAD! (And other ablutatories)

It's getting cold[1]. I had a (hot) bath for the first time for ages, which was lovely and relaxing. And I have to start thinking about making sure I'm wearing enough when I go out.

I have lime shower gel. This is very nice, but makes me feel like Ralph Wiggum, because it looks and smells and feels like it should be eaten :) I deliberately didn't get the yellow[2] one because that would be an order of magnitude worse. I have shampoo too, but is put away for a few weeks because:

I shaved my head again. I had let the hair grow a bit long (though not in absolute terms) before shaving it back again. Reactions seem to be:

* "Oh my God, it's all gone!" I think mainly a slightly more extreme version of the "We both know you cut your hair, and we both know we both know, but I can't not comment" reaction we're all subject to.
* "You nicked yourself." Oops.
* "Let me stroke it." Hmmm. Right.
* "Your hair is still short!" Oh yes, we haven't met for three months, we should have stayed in touch...
* Not recognising me. Though when stunned from a fresher's fair, I'm impressed anyone recognises anyone at all.

Other random non-toilette-related news: I left my shinybike a bit too long outside kelsey kerridge and a security guard said he saw a couple of dodgy looking guys scoping it out. Oops, I hadn't adjusted to having shinyness.

[1] Quote from last night

A: It's cold outside.
All, in chorus from all over the house: There's no kind of atmosphere.

[2] Lemon. Sometimes colours are a quicker reference point than smells :)

Fresher'[1]s fair.

Due to "being asked complicated choice tree questions at the last minute" I left work for the fresher's fair a bit late. The journey I think would be filmed as a parody of old films with chases through cardboard sets. Benny-Hill-esque background chase music. I wouldn't be on my real bike, it'd show something with mini wheels and my legs pedalling at 10x real speed to show haste. It would cut between shots of me, obviously pedalling in front of a blue screen, to scenes of road chaos and rush hours. Two large cardboards lorries would be shown veering together and then apart, nearly squishing a little model of me.

Then I got to KK[2], went in the stallholder's entrace -- again no-one checked who I was, though I'm assured they do sometimes -- skipped up the stairs, and trawled the room for naath and eni silhouettes. Then I stand for an hour repeatedly offering people fliers.

I wander take a break to wander round the fair and see who else I know and what might be interesting.

* Almost of poohsoc all doing different stands.
* A giant LARP-treasure-trap-diplomacy-assassins-cusfs-jomsburg collective of half a dozen stalls.
* I am invited to join larp by the only guy on the stall I don't know.
* People in corsets and bikinis and who stroke my hair wander past to (a) be ironic at shows that spice the episode up a bit with that sort of thing and (b) to spice the episode up a bit
* The *conservative* party are wearing bikinis. Fair enough, but somehow it doesn't seem to stand for the sort of things I thought they were supposed to champion.
* A row of a dozen christian societies, a few christian music societies, and a lone "Christians in Unity in Cambridge" stall on the end.
* A girl from the amnesty stall I exchanged fliers with *last* year as well. She promised to come to poohsoc at last. I promise to go back to amnesty more.

People keep jumping out at me. It's a strange sort of flirtation. I glance at the stall, eyes go to fliers, posters, paraphenalia, and briefly stall-holder's faces in case I know them, and they (or we) pounce and make eye contact and ask "Why *don't* you want to join Canoe Club/Pro-Life/Officer's Training" :)

All in all though it was laid out fairly well. There was much grouping of societies in fairly logical ways, like sports societies in the side rooms -- this makes sense, you know whether you want to go first or last, you don't think "Well, I'll just do the main hall, there won't be anything interesting there". Xians and other religions together. Sciency things together. Advertising people together.

Of course, there's some orphans. OTOH, on the whole, I'm sure there were fewer stalls than last year, you could *nearly* walk down the aisles.

[1] Hey, another optional apostrophe!
[2] Kelsey Kerridge sports centre. Despite my haircut, I am no KKK.

Cambridge Writer's Guild

Oh, and the Cambridge Writer's Guild again rose from the ashes, with new and dynamic people promising to make it work *this* year. It'd be really good to combine all these proto-writing-organisations (camwriters, jomsburg tradiitonal things, etc) around here, attract the number of people I know who have actually completed novels and are good, think about the magazines that publish, etc.

Student run computing facility

Also, on my wandering, I met Richard Atkinson and Matthew Garret on the Old Technology/SRCF stand.

Matthew said someone in the university had said non-current-students *might* be allowed (limited?) SRCF accounts to be able to manage university society mailing lists and websites, but this was up in the air, and they were waiting for a quantum like collapse of the anomaly :)

s/Serenity/Ceilidh/

Oops. I *thought* I was finally on the round mailing list, but apparently not. OK, will email now.

I think I will be ceilidhing on sat (8.00-11.00 sat Parkside, just off parker's piece http://www.cam.ac.uk/societies/round/ceilidh.htm).

So unfortunately Serenity can't happen then. I'm sorry. If people want, we could go on sunday or next week.