Dominic's Diary

Sunny bank holiday weekend

I had a relaxing bank holiday weekend, due to some nice weather, and several spontaneous outings, so here's a spontaneous diary entry to match.

On Friday evening Gillian and I went for an early dinner at the University Club restaurant, where they have recently started offering some more modestly priced menus at different times of day. It was quite a nice meal, and was accompanied by complimentary glasses of wine (as part of an introductory offer), but suffered from the Club's usual problem of the food being quite oily, and not being served with that much in the way of vegetables.

After that we went to see Episode Three at the Ozone (the second time for me). Since most blogs I read seem to have mini reviews/rants about this, I'll be brief. It's an entertaining film; some of the action sequences were stunning; I enjoyed the gratuitous Yoda light sabre scenes; some of the dialog was absolutely appalling, and some of the fight scenes went on for rather too long. Now I just need to see Episode Two...

Saturday started off with some geek-related tedium: Stanley, a Compsoc server, crashed overnight, so I had to ring Energis to get it rebooted again (which they did very efficiently), and then I went chasing TNT up for a missing delivery of a machine for a new incarnation of Urchin (on which this web site is hosted). I eventually drove down to Didcot to pick it up, and duly took the lid off.

Saturday was the final day of Eights Week, and I wandered down to the river mid-afternoon (taking the scenic route via the towpath off Osney Mead and through Grandpont nature reserve) to meet Gillian, Nick, and others, and cheer on Hilary, who was rowing for Linacre. After a while by the boathouses and wandering up and down the towpath to watch races, we retreated to the Isis Tavern. I took a few photos of the day.

On Saturday evening Dave and I went to see A Good Woman at the newly refurbished Phoenix. This was, of course, a completely different style of film, and very enjoyable. The script was well-adapted and funny, and the acting was superb throughout.

Sunday was reasonably quiet, but we had a double round of dancing in the evening as Niall came to Oxford to dance in the beginner's ballroom class; then we all got to do some Latin afterwards.

After some cake-making, Monday saw us celebrating OULSC's tenth anniversary by punting up the Cherwell with a plentiful supply of Pimms, lemonade, cake, and other assorted munchings. A quiet evening at home followed catching up on a few episodes of 24, and generally being sleepy, as sun and punting tends to bring on.