h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The town was swarming with teens in uniform on the way to work this morning, so it must be the first day of the new school year. This means slight changes to morning and lunchtime routines, as certain places tend to get a bit clogged up with 'em, causing unnecessary delays and general annoyance.

And although the term doesn't start here on campus for a while yet, it seems that the sporty students have all come back. I joined the university gym over the summer, which has been odd but alright. However, I went on my way home from work yesterday and suddenly the place was full of fit young things with nary an ounce of fat, more muscles than you can shake a stick at and seemingly endless stamina. As the gym is only partly open to the public, there aren't all that many normal plebs like me that use the place, so I won't really have many opportunities to think 'oh well, at least I'm fitter than him/her'. I will keep going, though, and I'm sure I'll work out which times are best for avoiding the sports science students and sports team members. I'm guessing early morning, what with this being a student gym! But until I work that out, they'll just have to cope with a struggling librarian puffing and panting away and trying not to feel inadequate.

My first library tour is next Monday - one of my favourite aspects of the new academic year.

I love my work gym for just that reason. *Everyone* is aging, wheezing, and gone a bit flabby round the middle (apart from a couple of girls but they are lovely and don't appear to have noticed that they are in fact goddesses) so I fit right in Hope you find a good time to go soon. You're probably right about the early mornings - Thursday morning should be good (and Wednesday afternoon) as I seem to remember from my uni days that the inter-university competitions took place on wednesday and was always followed by a celebratory or comiseratory (ok I made that word up) piss up. It was usually difficult, from the outside at least, to tell which was which...

Ah yes, I'd forgotten Wednesday afternoons. That was once my early finish day, but I don't have one of those any more. After work on Weds would probably be an excellent idea, though! Thanks, kelli!

See, I *did* learn something in my years at uni

I don't have anything to do with the student inductions and first computer sessions but will have to answer seemingly endless rounds of questions like 'what's my password' 'I've forgotten my login' 'where is room suchandsuch' and so on for the first few weeks of term.

Yep, we get the same sort of thing in the library. Maybe I like tours because they offer a break from that!

Then they find Hootoo!

Does The Missing Link bar still exist in Darwin College?

Hmm, I've not visited Darwin in my recent trips up to the University of Kent (I work for the opposition, you see, having defected from UKC after graduation). When I was there, the Missing Link was a wee building behind Darwin and was barless. The bar in Darwin was named Origins, and served (still serves, I believe) vaguely Mexican food, with your table number being on a big green turtle.