Halfway to 50!

Well I recently celebrated my 25th birthday and it feels weird to now be in my mid-twenties. To be honest I haven't really done much to celebrate my birthday in recent years, it's hard not to feel that trying to organise people for a party or a night-out or whatever is a chore and then you feel a responsibility to make sure other people are having a good time on your birthday! This year I finished work early and I met up with a friend. We went to see John Wick 2 at the cinema which was brilliant (early afternoon is definitely a good time to go to the cinema as well!) and then went to a bar and did some catching up and played a bit of pool. He then had to go to work so I went home and had a lovely Indian takeaway with my family. We also went out for a meal at a restaurant as is tradition in our family on another night which was very nice.

As to what else I have been up to since my last update in January...I continue to work away at my PhD, unfortunately still haven't managed to finish the current section of work I've been working on but will hopefully have it all written up soon. I have been getting ready to start the next section and have to say I'm rather looking forward to getting back into lab work, though I probably will regret saying that once I'm back in a few days and am knackered from rushing about doing DNA extractions and PCRs. I am going down to Dublin soon for another conference but this time I have decided to give a talk on my work rather than just present another poster. It is a fairly small conference and it is directly relevant to the area I work in however it is difficult not to be nervous.

Our music group where I work/do my PhD is still going strong. The guy who brought us all together very kindly invited us to his house at the start of March so we were all in a room with a drum set, amps and microphones making music which was a lot of fun. We continue to play together on Monday nights and are thinking about trying to write some original songs. In some ways it has helped to revitalise my love for playing music. It has also made me think about taking better care of my instruments so I actually changed the strings of one of my electric guitars for the first time by myself and I have to say it looks a lot better after giving it a good clean.

Picture of me from the jam session, we had a laptop connected to the tv showing chords and lyrics

I know I don't really update as much as I should but I only feel like writing when I actually have something to say. That said I recently bumped into someone I knew from school who reads my blog so it is nice to know that people do read it. I like to think I have helped give at least some people an impression that people with Treacher Collins Syndrome are just normal people. Hopefully people with TCS or other conditions find it useful as well.

Thanks for reading!