Claire's blog

I’ve been doing a bit of immunofluorescence staining recently on my cells. This lot are some coronary artery endothelial cells nicely stained for von Willebrand Factor (a protein you find on the cell membrane in endothelial cells). The green is the protein and the blue is the cell nucleus.

On the other hand you’ve got these coronary artery smooth muscle cells stained for smooth muscle alpha actin – a protein you should always be able to find in this cell type that’s part of the structure supporting the cell from the inside. This time the red is protein and the blue is the nucleus.

This time I’ve got one nice big cell in the middle being nicely behaved with lots of protein, and lots of cells around it with NO ACTIN! Apparently, figuring out what on earth is going on here is what they pay me for, but there are days when I’m not sure it’s enough…

It’s just that I’m sitting here waiting for the slides I’m currently staining to incubate so I can look at them, and so I’m surfing the web. Honest! And sometimes I come across things that really make me laugh like finding out that a snake and a hamster that was offered to him as a meal have now become friends.

These chalk drawings are really rather impressive

Took the quiz twice, still ended up with this result

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I know, I know. I should post more often, especially as the backlog of photos is building up of things I’ve beaded or knitted, and places I’ve been too. However I got my new work computer hooked up to the network today, meaning that I’m not stuck on the sloooooow computer, and I’ve got over the cold I’ve had for the last week so with any luck a profusion of posts will be appearing over the next few days. Right now though, I’m off to do a PicoGreen assay so I’ ve got some results for my meeting tomorrow, and then it’s off to the gym before I go home.

I got a parcel from home in the post today with two DVDs, a bracelet I’ve been asked to extend, my mail, and a surprise scarf! Good job too, as we’ve had snow flurries on and off to day, and it’s rather nippy. I shall be nice and warm while I walk over to my drawing class this evening.

Last year Dad got a nest-cam for Christmas and we watched a pair of blue tits build a nest, lay eggs, and then… vanish. When we cleaned out the box the eggs had gone as well, so we wondered if something had got into the nest box (the blue tits widened the entrance an awful lot). But spring is on the way, and apparently there’s a pair of blue tits investigating the box again (with a new protector fitted over the entrance). They seem to measuring for curtains and thinking of putting in an offer, so fingers crossed!

I was going to be having friends visiting this weekend but they chickened out on me at the last minute 😥 So I found myself browsing the shelves at the DVD rental place AGAIN. This time it was Serenity and Nanny McPhee. Rob recently lent me the series ‘Firefly’ on DVD, so I was quite looking forward to ‘Serenity’. I did enjoy it, and it answered several questions left from the series, but the death of some characters came as a shock. ‘Nanny McPhee’ on the other hand was just a nice film with a very sweet ending. A bit twee, but I still enjoyed it, and both films made good viewing while I was all domestic and did my washing and ironing.

Except this time I wasn’t renting, I handed over good money for them. Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were Rabbit has come out, and let’s face it, there was no way I wasn’t going to buy that. So today I popped into HMV while I was in town to see how much they were selling it for and discovered a special offer of the ‘spend lots of money with us and get Wallace and Gromit cheaper’ variety. End result, I walked out of there with Moulin Rouge, Batman Begins, and Some Like It Hot as well as Wallace and Gromit. That’ll keep me quiet for a bit.

Wallace and Gromit was fantastic by the way.

Managed to find a branch of the DVD rental place with the Corpse Bride, so I went for a bit of a Tim Burton fest and rented both that and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (which I did manage to see in the cinema). The Corpse Bride was great, I liked the story and I loved the look of the puppets and sets. I watched some of the extras as well and I was fascinated by the puppets and how they were put together, and pleased to find that they were all made just outside Manchester!

Wanted to rent the Corpse Bride this weekend as I’ve been wanting to see it ever since it first arrived in the cinema, but the video shop didn’t have any copies in stock. Instead I got Pride and Prejudice (already seen in the cinema) and Madagascar, which I’ve been wanting to see for a while. I was really looking forward to Madagascar, as I love both Shrek films, and it got good reviews, but somehow it never really worked for me. It was fine, quite amusing, good storyline, but it just wasn’t great for me. That said, I loved the penguins.

At BinI I was chatting with Marie and we found that neither of us had yet seen Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, although we both wanted to. We didn’t think it would still be on at the cinema, but today we made it to a matinee showing at the Eye cinema – us and 8 other people in the whole cinema! I really enjoyed it. They had to cut out a lot of the book (unsurprisingly), but it still had to show so much in the time that you don’t get a chance to breathe. Special effects were great, and I now really want a little model dragon. Good film, and one I’ll be buying when it comes out (in just over a month).

Went to the Nottingham arena last night for a Katie Melua concert – the tickets were part of Dad’s Christmas presents. Had a fabulous time – she’s become much more assured and more of a performer since I last saw her, and I’m now determined to buy her current album (which I was debating before). Then due to RyanAir deciding that they don’t like flying on Tuesdays I’ve got a day off, hanging around the house with Mum. This turned out to be a mistake as a simple trip to Beeston to visit the bank and buy some food turned into a chance to check out the new wool shop. Mum walked out with a selection of speciality wools (to knit scarves for bears, and decorate dolls – sensible reasons – not just ‘cos they’re pretty – honest!), and I’ve bought a pattern book and enough expensive wool to knit myself a cardigan. It’s practical! It’ll be cold in February!

We’ve spent the day fairly quietly. We went to see The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe earlier – which was excellent – and we’ve been watching Jools Holland to see the New Year in. Of course some of us found even this quiet day just too much excitement…

The snow is still lingering in places, despite the fact it’s been raining most of today, and it looked beautiful for my birthday. I had a lovely time, spent fairly quietly with family. My grandparents came to visit for the day (I hadn’t seen them for about a year) and we caught up on family news, played a few games and had a delicious chocolate birthday cake which I’d baked the day before. I was very happy to receive a DVD recorder and a velvet throw for my flat from my parents along with a few other things. I then spent yesterday shopping (I got a tax rebate this month, and desperately needed a new coat), followed by a party at a friends house – her birthday is the day after mine, and we always manage to meet up at some point this time of year. And then tonight we’re going out for a meal to celebrate my graduating. All in all it’s been a wonderful holiday, but I can see the return to Ireland and work fast approaching…

I’ve done a bit of work on the website, giving it a winter theme and adding a dolls section. I’m just starting work on a new doll from a class by Barbara Schoenoff – I’ll put up pictures as she grows.

It’s been snowing on and off all day, and now everythings covered with a light coating of snow. It’s my birthday tomorrow, so fingers crossed that it’ll last until then!

I hope everyone has had a lovely day, and received everything they wished for. We’ve all had a great time – finished preparing the house, opened our presents, had a marvellous lunch, played a game together, and now we’re sitting down to watch Doctor Who.

So my car (aka Danny) is now officially Irish – numberplates and everything. I felt a bit sentimental as they took the old plates off, and have kept them to put up on my wall 😥

The trips were all fantastic, and I’ve come back shattered (but happy!), and am currently cooking an enormous porkolt (can’t spell it right ‘cos I can’t figure out how to do accents) to try and convince myself I’m still in Budapest. Pictures will be put up as soon as I’ve pulled them off my camera. In the meantime, if you want a look at pictures of me looking daft in my graduation robes, you’ll find them here.

Got up at 3.15 a.m. this morning! I was meeting the others in the centre of Galway to catch the 4.30 a.m. coach to Shannon airport, ready for our flight to Dusseldorf. The journey passed without incident – except for a lot of yawning! – until we landed. Then we discovered our flights had been booked to Dusseldorf-Weeze airport. A perfectly good airport in every way except for not being noticeably close to Dusseldorf (or anything else for that matter!) and a lack of taxis. Eventually though we’d managed to work our way through the queue for the taxis, got to the station, and sorted out our journey to Aachen. We’d contacted the people we were visiting in Aachen from the train (after discovering we’d left the contact details back home and calling back to Ireland to get them :oops:), and had received a reply with directions on which bus to catch from our hotel to meet the others. Four of us went on the trip, and we discovered that three of us had enough German that we were able to put sentences together between us (we’re letting off the fourth one as she speaks English, French and Spanish fluently), so between this and the fact that most of the German people we met spoke at least some English we were able to get by very well.

We were going to Aachen to visit a lab we have a collaboration with at the University Hospital Clinic. It was a fascinating building, apparently based upon the Pompidou building in Paris.

From the outside the building looked amazing – much larger than it appears in this picture. Inside though, we found it very… green. The carpets, the walls, the cupboards in the labs, all a bright shade of green. Definately interesting though. After we’d met, had a bit of a tour of both the lab in this building and another facility, we went out for a meal with a couple of people from the lab we were visiting. We then tried to visit the Christmas market but made it there just as the stalls were shutting up. Instead we went for mulled wine in a bar alongside the market before collapsing into bed.

The Christmas Market at Patchings went very well, and I had a great time. We had tons of people coming round, but although they were spending we all noticed that the money was only really coming out for the small items, and very few larger, more expensive items were sold. Small things all add up though! I then flew back to Galway last Monday and spent the next 4 days actually doing the job that I’m paid for! It was all a bit frantic, as I now won’t be back in work until the 15th, so had to write an abstract for a conference, a short presentation, and get my work to the point where I could leave it alone for 10 days. I then flew back to England on Friday (AerArann from Galway to Luton for a change – pricier, but the timings mean I didn’t have to take yet another day off work) for a meeting on Saturday, and flew back to Galway a bit over an hour ago.

So far, that’s 2 flights in December.

I’m then off to Dusseldorf in the wee small hours of tomorrow morning with some people from work so we can visit a lab in Aachen we have a collaboration with, and flying back to Ireland on Wednesday.

Up to 4 flights now.

Then on Thursday I catch a plane back to East Midlands to meet up with Jo and my parents, ready to fly to Budapest early on Friday for the Christmas Market. We fly back from that late on Monday, then I’m graduating on Tuesday afternoon. Finally I fly back to Ireland on Wednesday. 8 flights in total spread over 13 days – I expect to be happy, but shattered.