smallclanger who didn't want to stay asleep. Lunch was fishcake butties, after which we bundled ourselves on to a bus towards the city centre to join the uk.misc meat. It was threatening to rain (despite John Humphrys earlier having told us on the radio that it would be a glorious weekend) but we ventured out onto the meadow nontheless, and found j4, hoiho and a pink recorder. Later arrivals included James and The Lurker (who may or may not have livejournals), silicon_lotus, nja and juggzy.The picnic was a success, it didn't rain in the end, and
smallclanger had fun trying to escape from us all. In the evening bopeepsheep went to a curry with some other folks from the Llamasoft forum; meanwhile, the remaining crowd slowly packed up and decanted to the pub garden. I had to leave before the meet formally broke up in order to take smallclanger home for some dinner.I got back at about 10pm (having missed the BB challenge - oh well), waited about 15 minutes for him to wake up after he fell asleep about 2 stops before the end of the bus journey, gave him some food and changed him into his pyjamas - at which point
bopeepsheep arrived back from the curry.Sunday morning was lazy as we were feeling somewhat tired. Again,
smallclanger didn't agree. Anyway, after a bit of Animal Crossing and looking for our map of Oxford, we set off in gloriously sunny weather to Botley for a barbecue with the Llamasoft people. smallclanger got to play on the grass with his friend R who is a bit younger (and doesn't have any teeth yet) and various people ate hamburgers and other items (including some `Madras bread' which was an interesting experiment). I caught a bit of sun and got pink arms, and so did smallclanger.This week we have also (as hinted above) been playing Animal Crossing on the Game Cube. I have played a little bit each day so far; I've just managed to pay off my house and get it extended (which is nice as I've a lot of stuff to put in it), and I've also planted a golden shovel tree and a money tree and donated several fossils and several insects to the museum. Sadly my pear tree died, so we'll have to find another one to plant. I wasn't really intending to let this game absorb huge amounts of time, but it appears that I am being sucked in…
bopeepsheep has been playing it for quite a bit longer; she now has two towns with three characters (including smallclanger's, and that's where my erstwhile pear tree came from) and is well on her way to paying off the extension on her house.On Tuesday I dug out my pair of binoculars for the obligatory viewing of the venus transit. I used them to project an image on the wall outside my house, then later inside my office. Then at lunch time I went outside and risked PERMANENT BLINDNESS by putting on the Mylar filter (originally made for the 1999 solar eclipse) and looking through it. However, a better view was to be had by looking at the projection which had been rigged up using a telescope in the University Parks (better telescope = bigger image). There were quite a few people congregated there, and several telescopes with Solar filters (as well as the one which was projecting the image) organised by the Museum of the History of Natural Science. Sadly I seem to have lost one of the lenscaps from my binoculars while I was there.
smallclanger has been a bit unco-operative the last two or three nights - only sleeping for 2-3 hours before shouting - after he showed some promise by sleeping until between 5 and 7am for three successive nights. Ah well. Maybe it's the heat.Oh, by the way, the HTML tag thingy gives me `<img>'. Or `<p>' if I change one of the answers.