A round up of all the action of the past week

A flyby update of what I've been up to over the last few days

 

Last Monday was the Great USA eclipse. 

I saw some very cool photos from friends on facebook in America which I was delighted with,  Here in Ireland we were promised a partial eclipse.  What we got was a very cloudy day for the whole day, then a sun that peered out from clouds about 5 minutes before the forecast eclipse time and a sun that disappeared behind the clouds right at the scheduled time.  So in summary we didn't see anything exciting at all!  Which was lucky in some sense because none of us had the special viewing glasses or anything.  This is me taking a selfie with the sun in order to avoid looking at it directly.

Tuesday I went to the launch of the Designist shop in the Science Gallery in Trinity College.  I love Designist - I currently go to the George's Street branch so I am happy to have a branch even nearer to me now.  I pottered around the gallery and spotted these bikes which I had seen out and about and had been wondering about them.  They play tunes depending on where you cycle and the pace you cycle around Dublin.  I must investigate taking one out soon I think!

Thursday evening I was out for a work summer party.  The food was quite good and the wine was lovely too.  But I didn't stay out late and was home around half nineish.

Then on Friday I met two of my old (and closest) work colleagues.  We used to work together about 14 years ago and every single day we went for an afternoon coffee together. It has probably been about ten years since we all worked together (in one form or another) but we have always kept in touch which is nice.

Completely impromptu we started off with beer, cocktails and Prosecco in my house - we had arranged to meet in a pub then we all got delayed so decided to meet in mine and go from there. One little sociable turned into a few more but we got out eventually - it was still bright as you can see from this photo.  We went for something to eat and then on to the Bailey for the night.  It was a fun night as nights out with these pair always are!  Although...some of us were "a little" under the weather the next day though.  But not tooooo bad I hasten to add.

Saturday night I donned my Hawaiian shirt and went to Ukulele Hooley with my dad and my uncle,  It's always a good night and I enjoyed it a lot.  It is a bit of a tradition for my dad and I to go every year.   Sometimes Enid joins in too but not this year :-(

It is also a tradition for me to wear this pink shirt for it each year.

 

What else?

Oh yes - I stayed over in Enid and Ciarans on Saturday night and we got up at 4am to watch the McGregor Mayweather fight.  That is our tradition, the three of us do it for every McGregor fight.

I went to the vintage and craft market in Newmarket on Sunday and bought three records - one of them, Emmylou Harris, I am particularly happy about.

I also met Enid on Sunday and we did some strolling around town and some nice sitting in Stephens Green - on a park bench, watching the ducks, it was lovely.

Medical lecture in Trinity College

Myself, Katie and a friend of mine went to a medical talk in Trinity College last Wednesday.

 

Myself and Katie had initially actually planned to go to a talk in the National Library on Kildare Street on DNA testing and the use of DNA testing in tracing your family tree/roots. 

 

However then Cillian texted me to see if I wanted to go to a talk on Cancer in Trinity that same evening, so Katie and I said we'd go to that instead.

 

The talk was presented by a doctor from the the Biomedical department in Trinity.  It was about cancer cells and how they proliferate and the work that this department is doing in researching how to target (and destroy) cancer cells.  They are doing this work with a particular compound (not named as far as I could discern :-) Top Secret!) on the cell during a particular piece of the tumour cell growth process.

 

I won't lie to you.  It went waaaay over my head. 

 

But I still enjoyed it - both doing something different in the evening in Dublin, plus also I enjoyed challenging my mind (even though, as I noted, it went way over my head!).