Scary

I was just taking some photos of my bedroom to show people where I am living at the moment and this weird stuff started happening. I think my bedroom might be haunted...

Magical healing powers

Last weekend I had a bleeding wound on my cheek. This weekend it's all gone. Amazing that isn't it. That will never cease to amaze me.

Before

After

My First You Tube

Today I joined one of the most popular websites on the planet. Popular enough that Google paid a reported $1.65 billion for it. My first You Tube is of me and Tom doing a synchronised backflip off the top of a party boat on Lake Travis during our lab party celebrating my leaving and a couple of PhDs. You can see it here.

Dinner Ladies

The lovely ladies in the media kitchen in are some of the people I have missed the most whilst in the lab in Texas. The pictures here show what it is they do. They make all of our buffers, solutions, media (solid and liquid) and clean and sterilise all the equipment that we need throughout the day. It really makes life so much easier in the lab. The other thing that I missed was the fact that people in the lab actually share things so there is only one of everything. This was particularly great for me last week because it meant that I could get into experiments straight away. I only really put this here to make the guys back in Texas jealous!

Tips

Buffers, media etc

Glassware etc

An interesting day

Firstly, I walked into town to do a little shopping and to look around. Norwich mostly looks the same except the market has been refurbished and looks very good. There is also a brand new shopping centre which is really nice. Here, the first exciting thing happened - I saw a really short girl with short legs wearing, yep you guest it, low cut jeans and calf high boots! It was the perfect pixie/dwarf outfit. I think her boyfriend noticed that I was looking at her so I had to stop.

Next, I went and played rugby for the second team of my old club. They made me play second row and then this happened.

My face decided to get in an argument with a rugby boot and lost. A nice welcome back to English rugby!

Then, of course I went out with the rugby boys, got drunk (hmmm Abbot ale) and bought a kebab on the way home. I'm not really a fan of donner kebabs these days but I had to have one for old times sake. I bought the small one but it wasn't actually that small.

But I did enjoy eating it.


And, of course, I finished it all (after dropping most of it on the floor!)

All in all, a pretty classic day out!

A dedicated follower of fashion

Apparently knee length boots are in fashion here. And they are worn over your jeans. Some of them look like throw backs to the eighties to be honest. Of course, some of them look great as well. These sorts of trends always amuse me. Some poeple should realise that even if x garment is the height of fashion and everyone who is anyone is wearing it, that doesn’t mean it will look any good on you! I think the equivalent for me in Texas recently would be the really low riding jeans that girls wear. Now, obviously you need a certain body shape to wear these things but some girls just don’t get it. If you have highcrackitis you shouldn’t wear them. It really is not pleasant to see your bum crack poking out of your jeans. We call that builders bum but I forget what the Americans call it – plumbers crack??? They don’t go too well with love handles either since they make the handles look more like saddle bags. Also, if you are somewhat vertically challenged or have particularly short legs, your legs are just going to look shorter and the result will be some sort of little dwarf like creature. Obviously the worse offenders combine all of the above traits. You could finish off the dwarf image by going transcontinental and adding a pair of knee length boots!!

Perhaps I’ll wear my cowboy boots out tonight. Over my Jeans!

Breaking the seal

I did some of my favourite things today.

I went to rugby training with my old club, Norwich Crusaders . It was great to be able to wear my full length studs (cleats) and feel them actually going into the ground. Oh! That soft soft ground, I have missed it so. It was great to see all the boys again and I'm looking forward to a game on Saturday.

Connected to the above activity, I ran myself into the ground. I think I was running around as if I was as fit as I was last time I was playing with Crusaders. I am not that fit. My brain was trying to escape from my head at the end. Of course, I kept on running because that's just me. Not looking forward to the stiffness tomorrow.

And now, as they say, for the "piece de resistance"...

I broke the seal on a jar of marmite!

That is such a wonderful feeling. I spread it on a toasted crumpet (after some butter of course). This is also a treat I have not enjoyed for a while.

I also did my second day at work back in my old lab. Its good to be back, although a lot of the faces have changed. It's also nice to get my teeth into some work again after a few weeks off. Hopefully it will all come to something good.

I hope y'all had a good day, whatever you were doing and wherever you were doing it.

Texas to Mexico via London

So reads the back of the T-shirts at the Texas Embassy, London.

After I got back from visiting my Grandma this afternoon, via a rather posh outlet mall near Bicester, I popped into town on the tube. After shopping I felt a little parched so I decided to try and find the Texas Embassy that Evan had told me about. He said it was somewhere around Trafalgar Square. I headed off in what I thought was the right direction and ended up in Green Park. Here I found a map which put me back in the right direction and as it happens the perfect approach to Trafalger Square to bring me out at the Texas Embassy. Apparently, back in the day there was a real Embassy nearby (When Texas actually was a separate country rather than just considering itself one).

Although I have only been away for less than two weeks, it was nice to wash down some Mexican food with a Margarita whilst listening to George Strait!

Next time I'll take my camera with me. Evan assures me there is a plaque somewhere nearby marking where the laws of rugby were first written. A plaque probably won't stand out as well in Trafalger square as a Texan flag though! Any directions Evan?

Painting with light

Last night I went to see Bert . He's doing a photography course and he showed me this trick he learned recently. You set a long exposure on the camera e.g. 30sec and then (in the dark) use a torch to illuminate anything you want in the photo. These are not the most artistic examples but you get the idea. For the one above I lit myself first and then passed the torch around me facing the camera.

For this one I just shone the torch on myself and left it in certain postions for longer than others.

This one was done by lighting myself in one postion then moving in the dark and repeating.

Brrrrr

I'm cold!

It's been a while so it's not something I'm used to. I'm sitting here in the house with a jumper, fleece coat and scarf on!

But still, it beats swamp butt any day of the week!

A little shaky at first

After spending the day in my pajamas yesterday, today I ventured out into the big wide World. First off I pumped up the tyres on my brother's bike. The front tyre immediately decided to explode! So, I borrowed Jimmy's bike and off to town I rode on the right side of the road. By right I mean wrong! I only realised when I got onto the bigger road at the bottom of the hill. All the way into town I was trying to make eye contact with the passengers instead of the drivers when approaching junctions to check they had seen me. I guess its better that I did that on my bike than in my brother's car!

In the afternoon Bert came around to see. We took a walk over the hill to Old Sarum and he took some photos of me climbing on the remains of the old cathedral that dates back to the 11th or 12th century.

On the way back home we stopped off for a cheeky pint. My first for over a year. I was a little upset to find that they didn't have any hand pumped beer. The barman obviously knew exactly what we were after when Bert asked him 'do you have any real beer?' since he replied 'no, we don't, sorry mate'. The pints of Old Speckled Hen that we bought were certainly good enough though for someone who's been out of the loop for a couple of years. As you can see it left me feeling quite happy and mellowed.

"Changeable"

Today I am being treated to a classic phenomenon of the British weather.

Whilst I sit in the new conservatory at the back of Mum's house this is what I see:

A lovely day you might think. Perhaps shorts are in order, maybe a stroll in the fields before luncheon.

Ha-ha! But no, alas you have been tricked. For the view out of the front windows is this:

A classic overcast and cloudy day in England. The joys of being home!

Dinner for Shylock

Well, I'm back in the UK now, recovering from jet lag. I have been losing weight recently but I think I have made up for it in the last few days...

On my last day in Texas we went for lunch at the Golden Coral. Buffet-style danger! For $7 I ate chicken fried steak, New Orleans chicken, pork chop, steak fries, carrots, green beans, sprouts, rice, corn bread, boston cream pie, banana pudding, carrot cake. I may have missed a couple of things out, but you get the picture.

In the evening we went to this great little steak place in Bryan called J Cody's (http://www.jcodys.com/). I highly recommend checking it out if you are ever in the area. Here, I got a 16oz Ribeye steak plus fries, potato salad, beans and corn bread. It was delicious and despite the fact that it was as big as the plate, I didn't realise how big it actualy was until I got home and remembered how many ounces are in a pound!!

Then I flew home and ate some nasty chicken in brown gravy on US airways. They never fail to unimpress me. Perhaps I should say they always fail to impress me. Anyway, that gave me a good excuse to eat on the way home from the airport. At the service station I was thinking about getting a sandwich when I realised where I was. Silly Me!!! How could you consider a sandwich when there are cornish pasties, meat slices, and scotch eggs on sale! A Cornish pasty it was, the others will have to wait. After a classic lunch at Mum's house invovlving bread plus whatever you can get your hands on in the fridge, I was treated to cockles and mussels followed by trout, and crumble for dessert all washed down with vintage champagne and red wine.

A particularly delicious few days, if you ignore the plane (plain?) food.

And luckily one of Mum's neighbours has wireless broadband internet so I don't have to deal with Mum's dail up connection!