Baby Donkey (donklet?)

As promised here is a photo of the cute baby donkey that was born on site while we were camping in the New Forest. The donkey is about 18 hours old at this stage and has just about worked out how to walk. The day after this it worked out how to run, and was charging around like a mad thing. As an approx. size estimate, the donklet came up to just above my knee. After I took this photo the father donkey tried to eat my camera.

Isn't it funny how baby donkeys look just like Disney pictures of donkeys when adults don't at all?

Interviews, Interviews

I've got a couple of interviews in the next week or so after a long dry spell. Fingers crossed for these ones! Interestingly, one of the companies is devoted to targetting a gene network that is known to be mutated in many cancers. Sound familiar? For those that don't know, that is basically what Dan is working on for his PhD. It isn't the same gene network, but basically the same idea. If we can work out what goes wrong in a cell to cause proliferation (or lack of death, which amounts to the same thing), perhaps we can target those faults (or spot them when they happen) and treat cancers more effectively. Unfortunately this sort of work is right at the early stages, so it doesn't look like we will be curing cancer any time soon. The other company would be fantastic to work at, I have a really good friend there, and she loves it...there is nothing better than a personal recommendation for a company! Anyway, I'm not about to talk at length about jobs I don't yet have, so let's not get our hopes up yet.

I really must sort out the photos today, and put some up from the New Forest.

That cheeky squirrel

A picture of the squirrel taken at about 5am from my bed. This was taken with my mobile so it is quite poor quality

A picture of just what that squirrel was up to (taken at a more reasonable time, with a better camera)! Ha-ha, he didnt' get our banana bread though!

New Forest

For the last week (up to Thursday) we have been away on holiday in the New Forest. We were staying in my parents' excellent tent in a forestry comission camp site at Ashurst. It is set just off a wood and has reasonable facilities so it was perfect. I must say that I do love camping and the outdoor life, sitting outside and just appreciating nature. The weather was generally excellant and I even managed to get a tan out of it. Of course, it rained when we were taking down the tent, but thankfully the parents were fine to put it up to dry when the weather got better ... like this weekend!

Staying in a campsite next to a wood does have its downsides. For us it was the dastardly squirrels which we had a constant battle with. Invariably I got woken up at 5am by them scurrying around our food and they soon learnt that when I banged around a bit it was not a threat because I could not be arsed to get up! In particular they seemed to be driven crazy by the prospect of banana bread and hot chocolate. The squirrels managed to eat through the plastic jar of hot chocolate but did not seemed to like the taste! Other items damaged were a carton of orange juice and the container with the banana bread in (bite and scratch marks a plenty). So I would say we won the battle with the squirrels but a taste they did not enjoy.

It was a relaxing holiday with a lot of reading, walking and one day of cycling. The cycling was great but it made me realise just quite how unfit I am at the moment.

We will stick up some photos at some point including some cute pictures of a one day old donkey on our campsite.

Alice might add some stuff later.

Hoorah!

Just wanted to say hoorah hoorah it is all over for me bar the corrections and mighty nice it feels too. Thanks very much to everyone that has sent their congrats, it is much appreciated, we just have to get Dan through now.

I haven't decided yet whether I will be using the title, but we will see, probably I will use it on the bank accounts!

Still no job, before you ask...

Hopefully we will see a bit more of people now! So if you haven't heard from us for a while look out! Give us a call or something and we will try and meet up (at least until Dan starts getting crazy with his approaching doom!).

Today's mood is: dorknerdy

Dr. Alice

Well she has done it. Alice has passed her PhD ... well nearly anyway. Yesterday she had a 2 hour 45 min viva which was pretty nasty, the examiners didn't really like her thesis. But who cares about that, the result is that she has quite a few corrections to do on her thesis but has what is called a pass with minor corrections (this is the next down from a pass with no corrections). Even better she got the minimum requirement on the corrections, 3 months and she only has to show it to her internal examiner.

So well done Alice, one down, one to go.