Getting plastered, and so on

Today I plastered my bathroom - we've had the broken shower replaced with a different sort and I'm making good. It was surreally like icing the wall, right down to being able to wipe the plaster off with a damp cloth if I dropped a bit. I will post photos &c. when I've finished.

Working backwards: yesterday I spent ages in B&Q buying plaster, tiles, and associated gubbins (and globe thistles). Saturday I spent lazing with

damerell and collecting bruises, and we finished watching Cowboy Bebop so who will I lust after now? Friday I did 48000 errands and visited Addenbrookes. They're going to do SCIENCE FICTION experiments on my brain/eyes. More on this when it happens. On Thursday I finished some clothes, photos also to follow.

On Tuesday I went to a Science Week talk by Tim Hunkin, in which he described his approach to engineering and showed us some stuff he's built. He is the most amazing, clever and inspiring person. (Also I am lucky to live so near somewhere with such interesting stuff going on.) The weekend before that, more Science Week stuff. All the talks looked a bit aimed-at-kids, and the drop-in sessions definitely were, but we had great success with the exhibitions. In the SPL we saw artefacts from the Society for Psychical Research, including faked spirit photographs, automatic writing, and a luminous trumpet. In the Arch & Anth Museum (I must visit this properly sometime) we saw the 'Assembling Bodies' exhibition[1], an interesting mix of anthropological tools and artefacts with more modern art/science/technology. At the Newton Institute (once we'd found the entrance) we saw the 'Imaginary' exhibition[2] and played with their equation visualising software to make a kind of bent orange disc with a handle. This is more fun than it sounds...

Back even further, and

damerell and I went to see a really interesting demo/talk on Japanese traditional dance, at the Kaetsu Centre[3]. Someone pointed it out to the ninja mailing list, and I've recently read Liza Dalby's _Geisha_, so I jumped at the chance to go and see some for real. There were three dancers (one of whom, Nishikawa Senzō X[4], is a Living National Treasure), each performed a dance in a different style. All three styles were very representational, but varied in use of costume/makeup/props and portrayal of a complete story versus a viginette/mood piece. It was all very graceful and some of the movements were quite familiar... There were lots of clever tricks with fans, some of which I'm sure were originally invented to make the audience go "but when I try that I just drop it in the floor!" (much like the way waiters carry stacks of plates, which I'm sure serves the same purpose). Afterwards there was a really interesting Q&A and a demonstration of the use of fans, with a chance to try it out for ourselves. We got to keep the fans (a fetching purple colour) as a reward for making fools of ourselves.

[1] http://maa.cam.ac.uk/assemblingbodies/ - I would really recommend this, and it's apparently on until December, so I think I will try to go again and write it up properly.

[2] http://www.imaginary-exhibition.com/?lang=en

[3] http://www.kaetsu.co.uk/speeve.htm

[4] Not aka Dance Hero X except by people who have been playing Chocobo Mystery Dungeon too much.