The past months

It's been song long since I've written here, that I hardly know how to do this anymore. I want to write more about things that inspire me, and make me feel excited about the world, but the first months of this year I couldn't even bring myself to write anything because I thought I was boring, which got me in a spiral of selfloathing, insecurity and even moring boringness.
In february I started my internship at the department of Zoology of my university. I studied the development of the heart in the chick embryo, so most of my days were spent around eggs, trying to inject hearts of not even a millimeter wide, or taking pictures with a scanning electron microscope. I'm actually quite proud of what I accomplished there. Even though my research doesn't mean much for the scientific community or anything, I got to research this amazing and complicated process and take these beautiful pictures.

It was wonderful to see the heart develop from a simple tube, to a four-chambered heart, which is very much like the human heart. If you're interested in understanding the pictures: the first one is made with a scanning electron microscope and shows the heart when it has just looped. You can already see the primitive atrium (A) and primitive ventricle (V) with the atrioventricular canal (AV) and the outflow trackt (OFT).
The second one is a dissected heart of an older embryo, and shows the trabeculated parts of the heart. The trabeculae are the spongy looking parts of the ventricle wall, which make the heart much more firm.
I took the last picture through a light microscope. You can see the four chambers (left and right ventricle and atrium), the outflow trackt and the interventricular septum. And this whole process takes to more than three days!

I also met someone at the zoology department who I've grown to love very much very quickly. His name is Bart, and you'll probably hear more about him from time to time. He makes me very happy.

I do realize that this is not a very coherent story (if it even qualifies as a story) but I hope I'll get used to writing again over time. Please bear with me. This is just a new beginning.

A kind of huge update

I know I haven't been blogging much lately. I just feel so swamped and then I stress out so much I do almost nothing in the end en feel even more stressed out the next day... I still have to organize my internship (which is already starting in February!), final exams are coming up (less then a month left...) and the Dutch version of Christmas, Sinterklaas is next monday! I have all the gifts ready, but traditionally we also make a "surprise" (Dutch pronunciation: sur-PREE-seh) which is an elaborate way of gift wrapping, often in a specific shape, which has to relate to the gift inside ánd the (also traditional) poem. So... lots of work to do ^_^
It's always so much fun though, and very much worth all the hard work. It's just my parents and me, sitting around the fireplace with our enormous pile of gifts and eating ridiculous amounts of kruidnoten and speculaas.

This makes me realise how much typically Dutch things are associated with Sinterklaas! I think I'll have to do a Mythology Monday post about him next week! And I'll take pictures of all the exotic food :)

Some other news: I've been going to a bookbinding course for the past three weeks! I'm the only one below fifty (and therefore the only one not complaining about bad eyes and menopause related issues) but it's a lot of fun and I'm learning all kinds of things I had no idea about. I'll show some things I made there some time soonish, but in the meantime, you can see some notebooks I previously made here, here, here and here.

And last but not least: my mom and I finished a polar bear hooded scarf to go with this bag! Pictures will follow soon, but I can already promise you it's very, very cute :)

I'll be back soon!

The Midterm Monster

I could go on and on about how much work I need to do (al lot) and how stressed out I am (very), but this drawing says it all.

{Source}

Also, I really am too busy studying for my midterms... I'll be back on monday with a Mythology Monday post though!

P.S. You can read Hannah's full post on the Midterm Monster here. She's a genius. She also did a series on How to be a Hipster which you should read because it is really funny (and kind of confrontational for me...)

Back to school...

I can't believe how fast time went by! The last three days went by in a blur of stress, new classes and new people. School has definitely started!
I had my first classes of Japanese stories, English literature, Classical literature and Mythology. I hardly remember Japanese stories because I was too bewildered by all the new people and actually finding the right classroom to pay attention to anything, English literature went better because I happened to sit next to a girl who didn't know anyone either (she's taking me tea shopping next week so that should be fun) but we also had to discuss a poem, and I got sorted into a group with two guys who really didn't want to agree with me... With classical literature and mythology I felt more at ease. I recognized most of the names in the stories and I just really like myths :) I think I might start something like 'Mythical Monday' to share the best ones with you :)

I really want to read the Iliad and the Odyssey now... And this is definitely the prettiest version that contains them both :)

I'd really really like to have this one though, I love the clothbound classics!

But they don't have a clothbound versions of the Iliad, so I might go with these two, because they'll look nice together and they're a bit more practical to take with me on the train :)

Well, I'm off to eat the chickensoup my neighbour brought over. I guess she thinks I'm only eating unhealthy food now my parents are on their holiday, because the said "If it doesn't taste good, a least it's healthy!" :P
I actually eat pretty healthy though, except from the occasional speculaas ;)

Galaxy nails

I've been wanting to do a nailpolish post for a while now, but (being a pretty huge procrastinator) my nailpolish was already chipped by the time I got round to making some pictures. But it's finally here! This is my take on the galaxy nails by Caitlin I came across a few days ago :)

I think they turned out pretty well! And it's really easy to do. I just used a very dark purple as the base coat and dabbed some green, lightblue and silver on it with a piece of cloth. Add some glitter and you have the whole galaxy on your fingertips!

As you might have noticed, my fingers are pretty long. Some people think they're creepy, especially when I do things like this:

But it's always nice to have a coversation starter :)