Beautiful, Beautiful Ireland...and more food

So the lab went on this Tapas Trail thing where we went to 5 different pubs/bars and ate 3 tapas at each place. A tapa is like an appetizer of some sort. It was a lot of fun, but not Muslim friendly. haha. At every place at least one and sometimes two of the tapas were either pork or prawns.

Okay, so this past weekend I went to Northern Ireland and Belfast to see the Giant's Causeway. Naturally, when one goes on a 9 hour tour, lots of pictures come about. I took over 275:)..don't judge me. So this blog will be very picture filled!

So on the way there, the guy didn't fill up at his usual spot because there was no space for the bus; he thought he could make it to the next gas station...but that didnt' quite work out as much as he hoped. Haha..we were stopped in this one little city for like 30 minutes.

Near the Carrick rope bridge.

Here's me excited about the rope bridge

The water is so gorgeous!

The rope bridge connecting the two cliffs. So this bridge was made my fisherman who fished mainly salmon back in the day. They made this bridge so that they could carry their salmon to the main land; however, when it was first fashioned, there was only one side that had a rail..yikes! Heavy salmon+1 rail on a high bridge=no good.

The view down from crossing the bridge

Deep in thought after I crossed the bridge.

The water is so clear!

Crossing the bridge to get back to the mainland.

The Giant's Causeway. Rumored to be the 8th wonder of the world (what isn't the 8th wonder of the world these day?...probably Oklahoma..I still love you OK, but you're not as pretty as Ireland). These rocks formed from a volcano like 60 billion (or was it million?) years ago.

I could just stay there for hours..too bad we only had 1 hour. Bitches. You take this 9 hour tour to the Giant's Causeway, but you only spend 1 hour there..who plans these things?

Deep in thought again. SO PRETTY!

So what's cool about the Giant's Causeway is that almost all the rocks are hexegon shape..onlya minute amount are pentagons. Too bad there aren't any rhombi

Dunluce castle. Built (or was it taken over? I don't remember...not important) by the McDonald's from Scotland. Are these the same McDonalds that took over America too? No one knows...

Belfast City Hall

War on want...nicely put. I think this can go out to some people in my family:)

Pretty much sums up Ireland's history in one sentence.

Interesting..

So all over Belfast, there are murals depicting the Catholic and Protestant conflict painted on random walls. This conflict has engulfed the city. There's a Catholic side and Protestant side of the city, and in one area there is ecen a huge wall dividing the city. The rest of the pics are mostly devoted to showing the murals.

At this one stop on the way to the Causeway. Beautiful countryside around.

This is a church in Belfast turned into a shopping center...pretty crazy.

The pics are done for now! I hope you enjoyed them:)

Okay so now the research part: I finally figured out the whole FRAP thing. It's perfected to the best that it can be perfected. I talked to Mani last week, and he suggested cutting out the CNS in my dissections, which will keep the boutons from moving. I did that, and it worked! so one problem solved. Then, about the entire bouton being bleached instead of the ROI...I decreased the laser power some, and then I tried using AIM (an older program) for shits and giggles to do the bleaching. It was more of a 'why not?' type of deal, but it worked! The only problem was that it didn't mark the ROI...so then I troubleshooted that by writing down the coordinates and such so that I could do the FRAP analysis on the precise place that I bleached. So AIM sucks when it comes to FRAP analysis...so I then uploaded the images and FRAP assays into ZEN, the newer program. I am able to do the FRAP analysis there, so it's all good. It's kind of annoying having to go back and forth between programs, but hey, whatever works right?

I finished imaging all of my syt-GFP control flies. YAY for getting results already:) Now I just have to wait a couple of weeks for the other flies to come in so that I can dissect those. Haha...so it's exciting that I'm done with the controls...but then I don't have other flies to dissect....so I'll have to figure out what to do in the mean time. I actually started on making figures for my final poster. I know, I know..it's pretty early, but I just want to use my time wisely in lab.

So today is Blooms day. From what I gather, it's to celebrate James Joyce's book Eulicias (sp?). Apparently, it's a tough book to read beacuse he writes it in streaming consciousness...so if something random pops up in his mind or a noise is made in the background he writes it down. Anyway, it was a great holiday because we had a Blooms day breakfast in lab:) we got muffins, danishes, and scones, and just ate them in one of the offices while John read us a passage from the book. Hahah it was cool. I discovered that I am a big fan of scones, except for the scones made by Starbucks in the U.S. They really don't do scones justice.

Not much is different on the home front. I did buy 3 more jars of nutella...stocking up, just in case:) you never know if there could be a nutella pandemic, causing all the nutella in the world to be depleted. I would at least have 3 jars left:) I also discovered that I like dark soy sauce more than light. It brings a new deminsion to fried rice.

Well, I'm off to finish getting ready for bed. I am off to county Donegal tomorrow to see the Shliab Liagh cliffs. They're the tallest cliffs in Europe. No worries, more pictures will come.

Until then,

Sara