» My most treasured possession

My first post (so be gentle)
Hi, apologies for my first post being rather slushy and long winded but here goes.
My grandad died when I was about 5 years old. I remember him as "jelly grandad". This is what I have always called him because when he was alive every time we went to visit him and my nanny he'd always phone up to ask what colour jelly I wanted for pudding (I was the only one allowed to choose out of myself, sisters and all my cousins as I was the oldest and he was very proud of me, his first grandchild). The answer was without fail 'red jelly'. But he always used to phone up anyway (I think he just liked to wind me up by saying there was a red jelly shortage and that we had to have green jelly (never actually happened thank god!)).
A few years ago (about 7) I found some 8mm projecter type footage in the loft at my nannys house and I thought I'd see what it was (because I'm nosey) and there was me in my little walker chair thing running around crashing into the person filmings legs (you never got to see who was filming). I asked my mum who it was filming and she said it was my grandad. It breaks my heart that there is no actual footage of him on those films. But the thing is I know he's there laughing at me chasing him and that's enough to make those films my most precious possesion. So now when I watch them, sitting there eating my red jelly, I think about all the times when my family have said I am so similar to him and how proud he would have been of me and I always hope that's true.

P.S my boyfriend has a stormtrooper helmet that I've got my eye on too.
(Thu 8th May 2008, 14:38, More)

» Pointless Experiments

Also to do with gummy bears
When I was 16 I went to Munich for a month to do some work experience. In the centre of Munich there is a whole shop dedicated to gummi sweets, it is one of the best places on earth and I often bought the odd Kilo or two just to keep myself going.
One day, for a treat, the people I was working for decided to send me to Austria on the train to see some mountains and gardens and stuff. Now I have never been a massive fan of long train journies and as such by the time we had been on the train home for about 30 seconds I was a bit bored. So me and the four other people I was sharing a cariage with decided it would be a good idea to stick several gummi figures including your traditional "gummi bear" to the outside of the window to see how long they would last before falling off. Much to the credit of the German sweet makers the bear lasted all the way back to Munich.
I sometimes imagine that bear... still riding the rails 8 years later... those crazy gummis.

(I also tried to squash my baby sister behind a door when I was 5 years old to see whether she'd "go like Flat Stanley" I was foiled only by one of those annoying door stops)
(Thu 24th Jul 2008, 16:10, More)

» Tales of the Unexplained

WoOOOooooOOOOo
When I was young, about 7 or 8 years old, I had a recurring nightmare about being in the car with my mum and her driving off a bridge into a river. Now, I knew this bridge and where it was, I knew the water in the river wasn't even deep enough to cover the car and yet despite this I kept having this dream. One day my mum got so fed up with me telling her about it for the tenth time that she drove me to the bridge to have a look and show me that the water wouldn't harm us and she wasn't going to drive over the edge. It was fine, we parked up with my little sisters and walked to where I said we'd ended up in the dream (in some weeds by the edge of the bank) and what should we find but a briefcase. Obviously my mum, being nosey, thought she'd have a look inside and there was money and passports and all kinds of stuff in there. We took it to the police and they asked how we'd happened upon the case. Listening to my mum trying to convince the police she was not mad for following up her childs "psychic vision" was hilarious and well worth the nightmares.
I also once had a recurring nightmare about a giant rabbit, the size of our house, covered in Salvador Dali clocks. That one never happened though. Shame.
(Fri 4th Jul 2008, 13:35, More)

» Sporting Woe

Pre-emptive
I hardly ever post on B3ta but I keep a constant eye on the QOTW for amusement when stuck working abroad

(Note: laughing hysterically to yourself in the corner of the airport departures lounge = slight disturbed fellow passengers and security staff. Note 2: upsetting the later has dire consequences in terms of body cavity searches. I have also discovered there is no point in trying to explain the concept of finding something in written form funny as 1. They can't read, 2. The powers that be appear to have given them all a sense of humour bypass upon hiring).

However this question called out to me.

This year I will attempt the Midnightman Ironman triathlon to raise a bit of cash for Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research.

Therefore I am pre-empting my sporting woe.

My aim is to complete the course and not require hospitalisation. Having given it some thought (it took approximately 30 seconds) I've come to the conclusion that my target may be slightly on the optimistic side. Therefore I have decided that I will consider the whole idiotic escapade a success if I manage to avoid dying. After all I don't want to set the bar too high.

On the plus side it's in Dartford and if anything is going to make me keep cycling\running it's the thought that if I slow down I'll be caught (and beaten to a pulp) by the Kent based chavs (not too worried about the swim though because they seem to be scared of water).

P.S I know what you're thinking. The chavs won't be able to recognise me as an aforementioned pasty faced shut-in when I'm dressed in sports stuff, but they seem to be able to identify me from 500m even when wearing a tracksuit. How they manage to pick me out in a crowd of runners remains a mystery.
(Thu 19th Apr 2012, 22:53, More)

» Blood

Ahhh the wonderful world of blood transfusion
Back in the day when I was but a mere undergraduate student I worked part time as a lab tech in haematology and blood transfusion at my local hospital. My course involved a very interesting unit on forensic biology, including, amoung other things, blood splatter patterns.
The university lab practical involved splattering horse blood everywhere (obviously when the lecturer wasn't looking) was quite fun but did show some interesting results such as the "shape" of the blood drops flying at a resonably speed were the exact opposite shape to what you would think.
Next day I went to work with my new knowledge of blood splatter and informed my boss of the results I had got from my experiments the day before (something I often did because he thought, for some bizarre reason, that what I did at uni was interesting). His response?
"Really? We'll see about that. I just have to check whether these old viles of blood are ready to be chucked or not"
Off I went chuckling to myself about the fact I actually got to do the experiment so I knew what I said was right.
Five minutes later I wandered into the lab to see my boss (a senior biomedical scientist) chucking blood samples around trying to prove me wrong.
Honestly I though he was old enough to know better.
(Thu 7th Aug 2008, 18:54, More)