Claire's blog

Today I woke up to blazing sunshine at my place in Knocknacarra, but by the time I got to work (15 minutes drive away) I was travelling through thick fog. I quite like fog, and it’s very surreal sitting in the office on the 2nd floor and feeling like we’re floating as when I look out of the window all I can see is grey.

Not much posting recently as I’ve been busy preparing for the Patchings Christmas Market this weekend. I always enjoy this, but was almost out of stock so I’ve been beading away in the evenings topping up. I’ll try and get photos taken of the new stuff this weekend and added to the website. I’m really looking forward to it – both for the market itself which is always great, but also because it’s the first time I’ve been back to England since September (and it might snow!). I’m also getting excited about my trip to Budapest for the Christmas Fair in a couple of weeks, and work are sending me on a trip to Aachen sometime in the next few weeks! I could get used to this jetsetting lifestyle 😎

Ok, so for my research I get to culture cells, and try to find ways to produce parts of the human body, but do I ever get to hear a mouse sing? These guys do. Somehow, I just can’t stop thinking of the Aero advert with the hula-hooping and singing mice…

Dad’s sent me the pictures he took during their trip to bring me my worldly goods. As they drove through Dublin on Friday, the traffic was going slowly enough that he got the chance to hop in and out of the van and take a few pictures include this one of the statues in memory of the Irish potato famine near the quay

While Dad was snapping the photos, Mum sat patiently in the van just in case the traffic moved on a few more inches

We were lucky with the weather while we walked around Galway on the Saturday afternoon, although it was a bit grey the rain held off, so Dad was able to get a photo of the Latin Quarter.

And finally, they shared the ferry back with one of the lovely Innocent vans.

So Mum and Dad came over driving a HUGE van with all my things inside. They arrived Friday evening, Saturday morning we were putting together furniture and finding new and interesting ways to injure ourselves, and then we went into Galway hunting out oysters and Guinness for Dad and a look around the city and the cathedral, followed by fish and chips that night. Then they had to depart nice and early on Sunday leaving me to gloat over what they’d brought me. I’ve mostly been unpacking and arranging over the week since they left, but we did visit a wool shop and I’ve been knitting a pair of socks with the option to phone a friend whenever my rusty knitting skills weren’t quite up to the job (thanks Mum ;-)). It’s taken me a while, but I’ve finally finished the first sock!

I feel so proud 😀

Gacked off another blog.

Type “[your name] needs” (with quotes) into Google, and see what you get. Apparently Claire needs….

…private support (I think Mum and Dad would say I’ve been getting that for a while…)
…a visit to the Bunny Planet
…Edie closer
…greater spending in economic development (can’t argue with that)
…to use the sample on the blue tree (not the red one?)
…to be street smart to remain profitable
…to hurry up and have her baby (gotta say, this one was quite a shock…)

Am very happy to have my internet access, tv and phone sorted. Mum and Dad are coming to visit this weekend, doing the sterling job of driving all the way from Nottingham to Galway in a van filled with my worldly goods such as bookcases, books, and BEADS. They’re also bringing a new TV with them so I can get hooked up for digital TV on Monday morning, having checked with me that I do get BBC2 among the 4 channels I can currently pick up so that we can watch QI Friday night. Must tidy up the flat ready for all the new stuff.

Well, the NTL man was waiting for me when I got back home, and I am now connected!! He wasn’t able to set me up for digital TV which I had wanted, as my TV was built around about the dark ages, but I now have internet and phone set up. This means I have to buy a new TV (which I’d been looking for an excuse to do anyway), so I’ve been browsing through shops and the internet looking at what’s available and drooling over some of the lovely systems that are available (if only I had a spare couple of thousand euros…).

In the meantime, I’ve taken the opportunity to update my website. There’s still a lot more I want to put up there, but it’s been so long since an update I thought I’d better put what I’ve got up straight away.

Wilbeary’s been on a painting holiday with Mum and Dad, and has been writing about it in his blog

Am in work this morning, being shown how to set up a gel for culturing cells in, and am currently in the waiting 1 hour while the stuff we make the gel from dissolves and is sterilised. Once we’ve got this set up, I’m off home to wait patiently for the nice NTL man, who’s promised to visit me sometime between 1 and 6 this afternoon to FINALLY connect me.

Only a few more hours until internet, phone and TV…

Dropped Rob off at the airport for his return flight, and then come into work to catch up on my email (I dragged the poor boy into work with me on Saturday, so I could get caught up enough on my cell work to take most of the day to take him back to Shannon).

Friday night we rented DVDs, and watched them that night and over the weekend. I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE FILMS WE CHOSE TO WATCH, well, maybe a little responsibility – I think the initial suggestion for some of them may even have been mine 😳 We rented…

Rob’s coming to visit today, which means I’ve got to head out to Shannon Airport in about half an hour to pick him up. I’m getting very excited about seeing him – he’ll be the first visitor to my flat, and apparently he’s loaded up his suitcase with goodies for me from home! I’m also looking forward to seeing him for himself of course 😉

7 days to phone, internet and tv

I GOT PAID!!!!! This is exciting ‘cos it didn’t happen last month, and despite an advance from the university, money’s been getting a little… tight.

What to spend it on *rubbing hands together with glee*

(9 days to internet, tv and phone)

So Dad’s finally started writing in the blog he set up ages ago. I’d comment in it, but I can’t log in 😥

Been to an interesting talk today on tissue engineering heart muscle by Prof. Buddy Ratner. It’s the first scientific talk I’ve been to in quite a while (what with spending a lot of time back home with Mum and Dad while I wrote my thesis), and I was pleased to find I understood it! Not lost all my scientific muscles then. As is also proved by the fact that the smooth muscle cells I started culturing on Saturday are happily proliferating (this was my first bit of lab work in about a year).

Weather’s changeable, and I got soaked to the skin running from NTL’s offices from the car park (really, really wet – I had to go home and change. My own fault, I left my umbrella in the car even though I knew it was raining). It was worth it though – NTL have promised that they are coming out to connect my apartment block to their network in the next couple of days, and I’ve now got an appointment to have my internet (and therefore my phone) and TV connected a week Friday. This is the earliest appointment they had to offer, but I mean to keep hanging around their offices doing my lost puppy impression on the off-chance an earlier spot opens up. It’s taken them two months to sort out, dammit! I NEED phone, internet and TV. I’ve watched most of the stock of the local video place! But soon I can phone my friends and convince them I’ve not completely forgotten them, my parents can stop running up large phone bills phoning Ireland and I CAN UPDATE MY WEBSITE!!!

My landlord is very impressed though. He’s been trying to sort this out for me for the last 6 weeks and getting nowhere. When I called to give him the good news he described me as a one person pressure group 😆

Speaking of DVDs, my recent watching has included…

Not having a great day today. Nothing in particular has happened, except for finding out that after being assured by the correct sources before I came over here that I would NOT need to register my car and get it taxed in Ireland as I was only going to be here for a short time, today I find out that I DO need to register and tax my car here. Not that I really mind getting it registered, as this isn’t going to cost anything, but they’ve given me a list as long as your arm of documents I need to produce to prove I own the car and used not to live in Ireland, but do now, and if I’d been told about this when I was in England, where many of the documents are, then this would all be sorted by now. Also, after being told I could keep it as an English car, I taxed the car in the UK, and I’m not sure I’m going to be able to get any of that money back 😥

In better news Green and Black’s have brought out a hot chocolate version of their wonderful Maya Gold.

It’s fantastic.

So Thursday was Mum’s birthday (me and Rob gave her a duck), Friday (yesterday) was Dad’s (bottle of whiskey of course!), and today is their wedding anniversary, so it’s been all go here for the last few days. Thursday night we cooked Mum a nice meal, last night we went to see Pride and Prejudice (not as good as the 1995 BBC adaptation but still very enjoyable), but all is quiet now as they flew off to Budapest in the wee small hours of this morning.

Which means I’m in this evening, with Rob, and STILL packing. I have a new method now. Everything gets sorted into either ‘Going to Ireland’, ‘Charity shop’, ‘Bin’, ‘Storage’ or the new category ‘Wardrobe’. This is because I agreed with Mum last night that I’d leave a few things in the good wardrobe in my room (the piece of furniture that isn’t going to be thrown out), to sort through properly at Christmas. The problem is that the new category is getting pretty popular. Do you think she’ll notice if I’ve had to chain the doors shut, and the sides are bulging?

Edited to add: Turns out, the answer is ‘yes’.

Flew home on Friday, courtesy of RyanAir from Shannon Airport. Amazingly, I managed to get a lot of the jobs that I somehow couldn’t find time for earlier in the week done in the hour and a half between my waking up, and having to start the drive to Shannon! I then got poorly sick with some sort of virusy thing on Saturday, and ended up feeling rotten from Saturday afternoon through Sunday. I’m beginning to suspect there’s something in the air at Nottingham – I so often get ill within a day or two of coming home for a visit (the fact I’ve been sleeping and eating at odd hours for the last week due to the fun and games of printing my thesis whilst holding down a job? Not relevent. I blame Nottingham) . Mum reckons it’s a ploy on my part to stop her leaving the country. The last two times she went to New York I got sick (though I don’t think one of them counts, as I was with her in New York at the time), so now I’m just getting it in before she leaves.

Happily, I feel great today, and have been enjoying the lovely weather while I traipse around the city centre hunting for somewhere to print the colour pages and bind my thesis. I was hoping to get it done at Nottingham Trent University as they were fantastically helpful with printing the copies for examination, but unfortunately their print shop is moving premises, and so is closed from last Friday until next Monday. But Nottingham University Print Shop have come through for me, not only promising to print the remaining pages tomorrow for the best price I’ve been quoted yet, but also recommending someone who can bind my thesis! It won’t be finished until next Tuesday, but my lovely brother has offered to pick it up from the binders and post it to Manchester for me, where the very kind admin assistant to my internal examiner is happy to collect the relevent forms and hand over my thesis to the graduate office (as I fly back to Galway on Sunday).

Overall, people really are amazingly helpful.

Going into town again tomorrow, with Mum, to get my hair cut, which it desperately needs. I’d also like to browse around town a little, not neccessarily to spend money (‘cos I don’t have much), but just to enjoy being back in Nottingham. Then in the evening we’re off to Ikea so I can buy some furniture for my flat. Not much, but I could do with some bookcases, a desk, and a few odds and ends. Sounds like it’ll be a good day 🙂

On the films update, just because I’m back in a house with internet, phones, and tv, doesn’t mean I stop watching DVDs. Last night we watched

My viewing choice for this week has been

Otherwise I’ve been sorting out printing the final, final version of my thesis for binding. This may seem like a simple job, but I’ve spent the entire week on it so far, and it’s still not all done. And today my car got a puncture! Everyone was very nice though. I got three offers of help while I was in the university car park filling the tyre with one of those emergency puncture kits, along with directions to a place that could carry out the repairs. I also had a lot of people telling me I should really carry a spare. Explaining that I have no room for them, and I’d have to carry two spares as there are two different types of tyre on the car just got me disbelieving looks…

Due to not yet having the TV or internet connected, and there being a very good offer on DVD rental at the place I joined, I’ve been working my way through the films since I moved here. So far I’ve watched…

It being Friday, I’m off to the videoshop again after work, to return this weeks titles, and rent something to watch over the weekend.

I keep an eye on the weather reports for Galway through an RSS feed, and I’m wondering why I bother. They tend to summarise a day ‘cloudy, chance of rain’, and what actually happens is I wake up to blue skies, bright sunshine, and a brisk breeze (which makes the sea look great), an hour later it’s chucking it down, 10 min after that we’re back to the sunshine, then an hour or two of cloud, another rain storm, some heavy mist/light rain, sunshine again, and now it’s time for lunch! And I thought English weather could be changeable…

Caught the plane back on Sunday, after spending a long time trying to fit everything I wanted to bring back here with me within the tiny weight limits set by RyanAir. Still managed to pack two saucepans and my DVDs, both of which I desperately wanted as I still don’t have TV or internet connected yet, and the saucepans that came with the flat are rusty. NTL should be coming out to connect me to the network soon though, and then I will have digital TV, broadband internet, and a PHONE.

Started back at work on Monday, and now officially have to concentrate on the job they employed me to do (before the viva they very kindly told me just to concentrate on getting through that), to aid with which I now have access to the computer on the desk they allocated me, instead of having to use the public ones in the common room. So I now work at my desk in the office, after fighting off the incursions of a desk-hijacker.