Yes, more food. My roommate works at an Italian Artisan Baker. Sadly, they throw away all of their croissants, scones, and breads at the end of the day because they make fresh ones in the morning. So....my roommate brings them home, and we're forced to eat them. The food is getting to me.

So I went to the Aran Islands (Inis Mor) this past weekend. It's off the coast of Galway. It had been storming, so the ferry there was pretty rocky. The person right behind me was puking halfway through the trip.

Dun Aonghasa is a fort on Inis Mor. The next few pictures are of the fort.

It's situated on the edge of a cliff

It's made out of stones

Way up to the fort

Thatched roof!

Near the cave I went to

The Cliffs of Moher: so beautiful. One scene from the 6th HP movie was shot here:)

The weekend before last, I went to Donegal to see Shliab Liab (Sleive League in english). It's the tallest cliffs in Europe, and it's absolutely gorgeous. 10x prettier than the Cliffs of Moher, but it's less touristy, so getting there (and worst of all getting back) was an absolute pain in the ass.

This is a freshwater lake near the way up the cliffs. People come here to fish trout and such. The other body of water you see in the background is the Atlantic Ocean.

Up the cliffs; there's a hiker's passageway. I went partly up the cliffs. You can hike all the way across them, but it takes 5 hours.

The water was just so pretty. A deep/clear blue.

The first 10 min. I was up there, it was rainy and SO COLD!

Great trips!! Absolutely amazing.

Okay, so now to lab stuff:

I learned how to do adult brain dissections. YAY! And I stained them for the first time today to look at brain anatomy. They're in primary overnight, so I'll get to see what it looks like tomorrow.

On a sad note: FRAP is no longer working. Les came (the confocal guru), and told me that my images and analysis are pretty much crap because I over saturated the images...I didn't know that could happen. I guess the imaging parameters for a dead prep and a live prep are WAY different. You don't just kick up the gain and go. So I'm at square one...again. With no data. It's really, really frustrating. AHHHH!! I worked on it all Friday after Les left, some of Monday, and some today, and it's just not working out. John tried to help (a grad student) and even Mani (my PI). I'm doing everything: changing the number of iterations for bleaching, messing with the zoom, changing the laser power; you know when you're bleaching only 5 iterations at 30% laser power and there's no recovery, there is a problem. Ugh, it was working before Les came...but I was doing it wrong, so I guess it didn't matter. But the results I was getting looked like the results of published data, and there was a HUGE difference in recovery between dysbindin RNAi (dysbindin is linked to schizophrenia) and the controls. It seemed like it was going well, and my RAC1 mutants came in; I crossed them, and they're ready for imaging, but I can't image them because my parameters are not working now. I guess that's research for you? It's just annoying because we have to make a poster in the end, and we're 1/4 of the way through, and I have no data. Hahah...sad week.

On a brighter note, I reread the 7th Harry Potter; it's tradition to always reread the books before the movie comes out. I'm so excited! Hopefully this one will be good. The other ones (not as much #7 part II) have been disappointing.

Brittany comes on Thursday:) and Ashley comes on Friday! I'm so excited; I can't wait to see them.