There were plenty of planned encounters today - much though I enjoyed being on leave, it's great to have my office filled with grad students again (and, not being Chair, I actually have time to talk to them properly, without an undertow of anxiety about everything else that's piling up). But I had two completely random encounters of note with undergrads ...
... one, when leaving Taper Hall, held the door open for me. I thanked her - she paused a moment, and said "Oh! I love your eyeshadow! It's really cute!" This, of course, had me worried - did I look like a panda that had been experimenting, or what? I doubt my eyeshadowing techniques have changed all that much since my first little palettes of Biba eyeshadow - in greys and purples and mid-browns - over fifty years ago. Well, maybe that's not true - I had a brief patch in my second year as an undergrad when I bought some bright turquoise blue eyeliner in emulation of a woman whom I fancied madly at St Hugh's, which neither improved my chances with her, nor the appearance of my eyes. In any case, I spent the rest of the day wondering whether my barely modified techniques had rendered me suddenly, fashionably retro.
It was, indeed, such a busy day that I feared I'd actually forget to take a photo of anything, so grabbed an utterly stock shot of campus - I was just shuffling around to get the fountain's best profile, and another undergrad helpfully said "I can take your photo with it, if you like!" That wasn't quite the point ... so I thanked him profusely, of course, and went on my way musing on the welcome friendliness of our students.
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