Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Ankhanu's posting's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
11:25 pm [ankhanu]	Haven't done a question meme in a while... 65 Questions You've Probably Never Been Asked Meme, ganked from Mech_Angel 1. First thing you wash in the shower? I give my hair a vigorous rinsing 2. What color is your favorite hoodie? Black. It's the only one I own. 3. Would you kiss the last person you kissed again? No. 4. Do you plan outfits? Nope. 5. How are you feeling RIGHT now? Neutral... and displeased with myself that I'm not writing my thesis. 6. Whats the closest thing to you that's red? The top of the container that I kept my black widow in. 7. Tell me about the last dream you remember having? I can't recall :P 8. Did you meet anybody new today? Nope, didn't leave the house. 9. What are you craving right now? Potato chips. 10. Do you floss? Now and then. 11. What comes to mind when I say cabbage? A round shape. 12. Are you emotional? I can get angsty, but no. 13. Have you ever counted to 1,000? I think I have.... 14. Do you bite into your ice cream or just lick it? Mostly lick. 15. Do you like your hair? It could be healthier, and less lossy... but yeah, it has this awesome shock of grey in the front on my right, it's awesome. 16. Do you like yourself? I'm comfortable with me. 17. Would you go out to eat with George W. Bush? Is he paying? 18. What are you listening to right now? Ben Kweller - I'm on my Way. 19. Are your parents strict? They kinda were... kinda weren't. They were probably stricter than they needed to be with me, following experience with my sister :P 20. Would you go sky diving? Maybe. I might pussy out though. 21. Do you like cottage cheese? Nope. 22. Have you ever met a celebrity? Celebrities to me? 23. Do you rent movies often? I think the last time we rented a movie was 3 years ago. 24. Is there anything sparkly in the room you're in? Given that it is used by a 6y/o girl... too many things. 25. How many countries have you visited? Four. The UK and US. 26. Have you made a prank phone call? Yep. They're not that satisfying. 27. Ever been on a train? Two or three times... in the UK and Toronto. 28. Brown or white eggs? The shell doesn't really influence the albumen and yolk. 29.Do you have a cell-phone? Nope. I've considered getting an iPhone, but to wait for the new one in June. As I wait, I'm thinking that I don't really want it anyway. 30. Do you use chap stick? No. 31. Do you own a gun? Nope. 32. Can you use chop sticks? Yes. 33. Who are you going to be with tonight? Amy. 34. Are you too forgiving? Yeah, I suppose so; everything turns to water under the bridge before too long. 35. Ever been in love? I'm a happily married man. 36. What is your best friend(s) doing tomorrow? Working. 37. Ever have cream puffs? Splorch! 38. Last time you cried? I managed to force some crying when I was moving to Halifax for the summer the first time, leaving my girlfriend for a few months. 39. What was the last question you asked? Would you be kind? A precursor to asking Amy to make me some iced tea. 40. Favorite time of the year? Mid-spring. 41. Do you have any tattoos? Not yet. 42. Are you sarcastic? Somewhat. 43. Have you ever seen The Butterfly Effect? No. 44. Ever walked into a wall? Indeed. 45. Favorite color? I've been saying green. 46. Have you ever slapped someone? Yep. 47. Is your hair curly? Nay. 48. What was the last CD you bought? Hmmm... it's been a little while, but I think it was probably Rush - 2112, Sloan - Parallel Play... and I think there was a third, but I can't remember. 49. Do looks matter? Yes... but not that much. 50. Could you ever forgive a cheater? Yeah, I have. 51. Is your phone bill sky high? I don't have a phone bill. 52. Do you like your life right now? No. It's not bad, but I should be done with that damn thesis, not working retail, with less debt. Other than that, things are ok. 53. Do you sleep with the TV on? TV is off as much as possible 54. Can you handle the truth? Much better than the pageantry of avoiding it. 55. Do you have good vision? I fear my vision may be deteriorating. 56. Do you hate or dislike more than 3 people? I dislike many things/people. Not sure I hate though. 57. How often do you talk on the phone? Every day I'm at work :/ 58. The last person you held hands with? Amy. 59. What are you wearing? black jeans, grey boxers, dark grey t-shirt. 60.What is your favorite animal? I'll use a broad category: beetles. 61. Where was your default picture taken at? Caper Radio, while recording Jedi Mind Trick - How'd they do that? 62. Can you hula hoop? Haven't tried in over a decade. 63. Do you have a job? Unfortunately working consumer electronics retail. 64. What was the most recent thing you bought? Supper from Subway, Saturday night 65. Have you ever crawled through a window? PLenty o' times. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
7:42 pm [ankhanu]	Oh mom, I always dreamed of being a good listener, so tonight I'm on my way. Spirituality is a topic that enthralled me for much of my adolescence through mid-twenties. I'd looked into various cultures, religion and spiritual philosophies, eventually synthesized my own philosophical take on the whole thing. I was never really one for the concept of deity, though the idea of divinity was reconcilable... but I've realized in the past months that I've moved on. I started my journey as an Protestant, being dragged to church on Sundays with the rest of the family, probably until I was about 7. Eventually, my family stopped going to church. I continued to more or less believe, and even have recollection of attempting to converse with the Christian deity... usually asking for some of the toys my friends had that I coveted (G1 Jetfire anyone?). Eventually, I found that I turned to atheism before I even reached junior high. I remained an atheist until somewhere around the age of 15 or so. Well, no, that's not really true. I remained atheistic and generally uninterested in religion and spirituality until that point. Around then, I was introduced to new age religions like Wicca and began exploring alternative spiritualities to the Christianity around me. I spent years pulling in information, discussing the ideas with people I knew and people online... synthesizing information from the popular Celtic based religions, the various Eastern religions/philosophies, African religions and other assorted pagan faiths and the Abrahamaic religions. I eventually developed my own little view incorporating many of the concepts common throughout and some of the specific ideas to individual faiths, forming a mish mash divinity denying external deity. I was happy with this for some time, but in time it's kind of fallen to the wayside... to the point that in the last few months to year, I've realized that I've circled around and find myself sitting staunchly back into the seat of atheist. I suppose while I liked the idea of spiritualism... I never really integrated it into true belief... rather a sort of quasi-faithful wishful thinking or romanticism. I suppose faith, to me, was kind of like a good work of fiction, let's say Star Wars. While it's fascinating and I can pull pieces in with which to self-identify, no matter how much I integrate, it is still something out there, separate from exactly what I am. So, yeah... I'm godless... but I always knew that, and I'm rambly... but I knew that too. Cheers. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009
2:49 pm [ankhanu]	What we have here.... This is a Blackout! released a self-titled demo at our show last Friday. The show was fun, though, as anticipated, our set wasn't terribly well received. If we played more, perhaps we'd develop a following, but the patrons were there to catch the act before and the act after us... during our set they went back to their tables to talk. The set was fun none-the-less... it's a good thing I enjoy making the music regardless, or I'd hate playing live :) We did sell a couple discs though, and pulled a couple bucks from the door to pay for production costs. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009
8:39 pm [ankhanu]	I'm not so jazzed about it, 'cause I just get razzed about it I've uh... sucked at even thinking about maybe considering looking at Livejournal since my last entry. I know you've all been eagerly awaiting my next little expose; I apologize. I'm about a month past my two years with my thesis. This is almost entirely due to procrastination (i.e. now), but some of it is due to exhaustion and sickness. I ended up with Bronchitis about a month before the last Entomological Society of Canada annual meeting (in Ottawa, ON), which slowed me down somewhat... but I still did a presentation, which I think went pretty well. I'll have to talk to my supervisors for info on how to get feedback from the judges at the conference. Once I got over the bronchitis, well, it was Christmas season, and I'm working retail at The Source by Circuit City (formerly Radio Shack... soon to simply be The Source)... so was pretty tired from working, and I got sick again around Christmas time, slowing down my work progress. After that, I spent most of January barely making progress, but I think I'm back on track now. Hopefully things will be wrapped up within a month. As it stands, the thesis is five chapters; an intro/lit review, detail of the study site, collection methods and determinations, an inventory of Carabidae, Staphylinidae and Curculionoidea, comparing the diversity of beetles among grazing/management treatments on the pasture, and comparing beetle community structure among treatments. The last two chapters will be made into 2, maybe three papers; the inventory chapter will contribute to a larger inventory paper. I've submitted a couple drafts of chapters 2-4, with the intro/lit review being adapted from my proposal, and the last chapter being a little bit of a stumbling block. Good fun. Other than that, in May or June I started playing bass for This is a Blackout! (Myspace, Facebook group, Facebook Fanpage) It's been pretty fun; we're not great, but hey, we're lazy :P I'm really glad to be actually making use of the Fender Aerodyne Jazz Bass I bought just before Jedi Mind Trick fell apart. I could still use a new, reliable bass amp :P I also started playing some D&D with some new people, thanks to Jon and Adrienne. They still have to cancel quite a bit, but the new folks are generally available, so we're still able to play, or substitute with some boardgames when they can't make it. It's nice to meet new people with similar interests, who are also pleasant. So yeah, not a lot's been going on... but I've been busy, and busy not being busy (damn procrastination). I look forward to this thesis being written... yet continue to procrastinate, albeit less. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 29th, 2008
10:36 am [ankhanu]	She's 5 Sometimes the insight and compassion of children can be surprising. I'm now back home, I moved back to Sydney on Sunday. Last night I was sitting with my daughter and "How it is Made" was on TV (she loves "the making show") and they were showing how toilet paper is made. Pretty early in she matter-of-factly tells me that paper is made from trees (about the time that paper for recycling is being shown on the screen), but then asks how they make trees into paper. I explained to her that they break the wood up into fibers, then stick the fibers together in sheets to make paper. She then asked if they cut down the whole tree to make paper, to which I told her they generally did. She thought for a few seconds then said "if they cut down the trees, where will the birds live?" This little insight prompted me to then give her a little talk about resource conservation and not wasting the things we use, as most of the things we use (ie paper) come from destroying things, and when we waste them more things have to be destroyed, and this hurts the world and makes it hard for many things to live, like the birds and the squirrels in the forests. It does rather please me that she makes these sorts of connections she does. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, April 19th, 2008
6:36 pm [ankhanu]	The end is near... if by near I mean off in the hazy distance. All of my beetles are identified to at least genus (two groups in two genera are causing me greif without having a reference collection to compare to), and they're as far as I'm going to go with them before sending them off for correction/confirmation and in some cases, determination from a local expert. Now I just get to get the data formatted and run some statistics... then write write write. (Comment on this)
Monday, April 14th, 2008
12:25 am [ankhanu]	My friends, don't just sit there and ruminate... I love and loathe this time of year. Spring is coming... but it's a goddamn tease! Through the week I've come out of the house to be met by a song sparrow singing in the tree near by, starlings are pulling out their impressive repertoire of sounds... I've just been wearing my hoodie as a jacket... even collected my first beetle of 2008 on the wing (some sort of dung beetle). It's been bright and warm... or at least warm, through most of the week. Then Saturday and Sunday, we had snow... Saturday's even accumulated a bit. Just warm up already! Only two more weeks until I leave PEI. I write my exam for the seminar course on the 25, then I just have to tie up some loose ends and head home. It'll be nice to be home with my wife and daughter again... but I will miss certain elements of the independence I have here. Not having to be home by a certain time and only having to worry about me while I'm working makes the academic life MUCH easier, and makes deciding to take up an offer to be social easier as well... but it'll be nice to have the girls in my life back in my life. They've both grown a lot in the time I've been away. Amy and I are probably going to take some vacation time this year... as we never really have had the opportunity to do so. I've either been working or in school through the year... If I'm in school, I don't have time to take off; if I'm working, it's on short contracts without provision for vacation time. Add on to that having no money and it means that we can't afford the time off. But, Amy's getting some vacation pay, and I'm just going to be writing this summer, so we're going to see what we can afford. Amy was thinking of hitting Montreal and visiting my brother, amongst other things to do there... but chances are just the fuel for the trip will be too expensive. Chances are that Halifax and/or PEI is more likely. I think I'd like to pop by here some time in the summer to experience it not being winter (and I hear it's much better here in the summer) and to introduce my wife to the few friends I've made here. We'll see what happens. We still haven't heard back on the state of funding for the Yukon sampling trip. I really hope the funding comes through and I get to visit the tundra and sample insects... but at the same time, it's terribly scheduled in terms of my personal life, as two very important friends are getting married when I'll be up there. I want to be here for their wedding... but I want to sample the arctic as well. Bad timing. Again, we'll see what happens. "We'll see what happens"... seems to be a running theme in my life. I make some big decisions with that phrase... such as "So... are we going to get married?" "Sure. We'll see what happens..." EDIT: Um, checking my previous posts, it seems I didn't mention the Yukon thing on LJ yet... clarification!! My supervisor here at UPEI was contacted previously in the winter by the federal government about taking part in a biodiversity survey in the northern Yukon (like... coastal Northern), sampling aquatic insects in (probably) the last two weeks of June. She's a little overbooked with other projects and conferences around that time, so offered the spot to me, providing the necessary instruction (I'm familiar with several aquatic sampling techniques now, but refreshers are always good). Now, for someone in my position, this is an incredible opportunity. Not only will it look phenomenal on a CV, but it's a genuinely useful and exciting experience to... well... experience. I told her I'd do it. As with many things with the Canadian government, the funding is quite tenuous and we might not find out whether it's secured until about two weeks before the trip. We're still waiting to see what happens there. THEMES! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, April 12th, 2008
4:43 pm [ankhanu]	No strings attached, no copy to match... Comment on this post with your name and I'll give you a band. Don't worry, I'll make it one you know and love. You put your ten favorite songs by that band on your LJ, then challenge others to do the same. I'll see if I can do this in some sort of order of preference, but I'm not sure I can. Adrienne gave me Sloan. 1. I Can Feel It 2. I'm not Through with you Yet 3. Autobiography 4. Stand by me, Yeah 5. Deeper than Beauty 6. Bells on 7. The N.S. 8. Left of Centre 9. Coax Me 10. Summer's My Season That took a lot of work. Was made slightly easier by the fact that I've heard very little from their most recent album, so didn't even consider it. (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 6th, 2008
12:45 pm [ankhanu]	I miss the dirt, grit and decay of the Star Wars universe. Yeah, all the current newer content looks pretty nice, but it doesn't look like Star Wars. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, April 5th, 2008
10:24 pm [ankhanu]	How do you say Goodbye I have the intention of being social and spending time with the few people I've met this year through this month, if they can likewise find the time to be social with me. I'll be done with being on UPEI campus by the end of the month and heading home to Sydney to finish my statistical analysis and write my thesis. Since I've done very little socializing since September, I don't have much time to get on it. Last night and Thursday I got out with a couple different groups of people and had a great time. Thursday was wings at Ise's with people I met through a former MSc student who has moved to Ontario; I played two D&D games with these guys while he was around, and I've been going for wings with one of them almost weekly for a while, but he was also in Ontario for 3 weeks on vacation, and he just got back in earlier in the week (Holy run-on sentence!). It was good to spend time with him, and two of the other people we played with showed up too. Last night I was going to go grab a beer with those guys again, but had a change of plans. Instead I spent the late afternoon and early evening with one of the other MSc students, a lab tech and a former MSc student. We hit the Wave (campus bar) with some faculty to celebrate the end of classes for the semester. One of the professors had his daughter with him (she's 7) and we all had a portrait drawn of us and I ended up making some salt drawings spanning about 30cm across the table; first I drew a pouncing panther, then a pterodactyl. After that, around 6:30 or so, we went over to another student's house for a barbecue party... but the barbecue wasn't working, so it was a "fried on the propane stove" party instead. I'm not usually too good with parties, but there was plenty of joking and laughter, and I didn't feel too out of place. I was back home by about 10 and got to spend some nothing time on the computer and reading. I have no other plans for upcoming social activities, other than hitting up Tom Fun at Hunters on the 11th, but I'm sure I'll manage to find other activities to keep me busy and social, and NOT working with my data for a while. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008
1:21 pm [ankhanu]	It's been a long time coming Phew. I haven't really had time to even look at livejournal since November. I did do a little bit of Friends List catch up in the first week of January, but that was about it. I've been busy with my research; I finished sorting my samples (arthropods from plant material and debris and beetles from all other arthropods) in mid/late November, went home for Christmas and spent the month working full time at Quality Cameras (though I said I could work part time, as I had research work to get done... which didn't get done), then have been identifying weevils and rove beetles and running some analyses since then. I did go to Quebec City in mid-February, however, to learn microdissection techniques to extract and mount the genitals of rove beetles so that they can be identified (Several groups are difficult/impossible to differentiate by gross morphology alone and unique characters of their genitals are required for positive identification... many of these species are <2mm long :) ). Quebec City, what little of it I managed to see, and at night, is beautiful. From my limited experience with Quebec (Quebec and Montreal) in the past year and a half, I'm beginning to think that if I have to work there, I won't mind it... once I learn French, that is. I was able to get by on the little French I know and the people knew enough English that we were able to get by at least. I'm heading home this weekend for both Easter and to take part in the Atlantic Universities Improv Challenge. After only spectating at last year's AUIC, I look forward to participating this year with The Danger Zone? I have to take Elania to some kid's birthday party at McDonald's during the improv workshop, so I have to miss out on that again, but the rest of the events should still be fun. I'm currently taking a seminar course, which is a requisite of the MSc program, in which each of us gives a 45minute seminar on our research to the other students in the program, and answer questions on it. My seminar is next week (28th), so I've been preparing for that a bit. I still have some rove beetle and ground beetle identifications to get done, but I put them aside for a bit while I work on generating some statistical results and some figures on the accumulated data so that there's something to present. I've done some Kruskal Wallace tests on the IDed ground beetles and the weevils (which are all identified as a complete data set), and Mann-Whitney U Tests when the K-W tests indicated they were needed for abundance by family and by species for each treatment, and have generated some rarefied species accumulation curves to compare species richness based on either samples or individuals collected. I've found a couple interesting patterns that I don't quite understand why they exist, which I intend to explain with some natural history information, which is proving difficult to find. I acquired some plant species distribution data with which to run multivariate analyses to see if the reasoning comes out more apparently. Should be interesting. I have a nice automotive saga I could relate, but perhaps I'll do that later. I'll try to catch up on my friends list a little. (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 8th, 2007
12:30 pm [ankhanu]	They don't get the letters you send, the phone bills at months end... Cell phones are almost as un-sexy as cigarettes. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
12:24 pm [ankhanu]	Send me documents and a photo of you along. I've had something of a letter-writing urge in the past while. I've always had this little nagging ideal that letters aren't used as frequently as perhaps they should be. There's just something about receiving a letter, hand written by someone, to bring a little bit of pleasure. Of course, this nagging little ideal is usually not strong enough to motivate an actual change in behaviour to actually write and send one :P I have begun writing a letter to a friend who is otherwise out of contact, and I have a short list of a couple other people I will be writing to afterwards. If you'd like a letter, give me an address and eventually one will show up in your mail box... and I won't even include any Bascillus anthracis, I promise. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, November 5th, 2007
2:47 am [ankhanu]	I remember you and I will relate to you how our histories interweave I'm sitting here at 2:45am working on a paper that I thought was due at the end of the week, but is, in fact, due in 6 hours. It's not going to be in on time :P But, that's not the point of the entry. I find it interesting just how much I enjoy finding literature sources (for electronic journals, the paper searches are a little less fulfilling). I hit up Google Scholar, or the Web of Knowledge or other searching software, type in a couple key words and see what comes up. Sometimes you come across the most wonderful academic articles you could think of and they fill you with a certain amount of joy; take a look at the title, peruse the abstract, and boom "hey neat! That's really clever!" I then download a pdf of the article with the intent of giving it a read and making use of it as reference material or the basis of future research of something, rename it to something meaningful (I usually name my journal articles as Author(s)DateShorthandTitle.pdf), save it somewhere where I'll be able to find it, and promptly forget about it. I don't know why I love the process of discovering articles so much when I read so few of them. I do have a nice little collection of journal articles, though. I'll have to get them all into EndNote at some point. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, November 2nd, 2007
9:37 pm [ankhanu]	For years I've wanted to have something like a music listening party. Invite some folks over, everyone brings a selection of music that they love, and listen to the music and talk about it. It's never happened though, which kinda sucks. While most of my friends like music, I don't really think any of them would be into the idea of listening to, then talking about, one another's songs. Not sure why exactly, but I get that impression. That or it would be impossible to get people to take time out of doing x to commit to doing such a thing. I'm sure it will always remain one of those "Hmmm, that could be fun and interesting..." thoughts. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 24th, 2007
1:54 pm [ankhanu]	9 months It's been 9 months to the day since we lost Bernard. I didn't talk much about it at the time, perhaps due to the shock and immensity of the situation, but I was recently chatting with El Huncheros, and well, it's time. Bernard was really a treasure, a performer, an entity of magnificent proportions. There were efforts to have a statue erected to commemorate his life and efforts, but they fell through. He meant a lot to many. Humanitarian, comedian, community leader, gourmet chef,scientist, religious leader... Bernard was the definition of life. The Improvia celebration in his honour was truly a stupendous event. The way the community came together was amazing. 24 January, 2007; this day shall forever remain etched in our hearts. Rest in Danger, Bernard. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, October 18th, 2007
10:36 am [ankhanu]	Crosstown traffic Driving in Charlottetown sucks the proverbial anus. People here seem to be exceptionally impatient drivers, which is odd since people otherwise seem fairly relaxed, and make some interestingly dumb decisions. I suppose this is what has led to my other main complaint... there are stop lights at almost every intersection that I normally encounter; in a small city like this, it's pretty ridiculous. It wouldn't be as bad if they were hooked up to some sort of sensor system or what have you, but, no, they're all timed, with advance turning arrows (and long red light waits), whether there is traffic to make use of it or not. This leads to a LOT of idling vehicles and a doubling of the time needed to make short trips. If I know that a light I'm approaching has recently turned red, the stops are long enough that I'm inclined to shut down my engine to wait them out. In my first month here, I lost about 50 or so kilometers on my tank of diesel due to idling and constant speed up and stop driving patterns. Sure, I only fueled up at the beginning and the end of the month (In Sydney when I left to come here, then again before heading to the Halifax airport), but I don't have to drive as far here, yet take just as long to reach the university as when I was driving 20+km. I live just a little too far from the university to walk... though this driving and idling is really bothering me, so I might just start walking anyway. I figure it'll take about an hour to walk, but I haven't tested it yet. I guess we'll see how I deal with mornings and oncoming winter temperatures. I should at least give it a shot on the days that I don't have class. I wish I could afford a bicycle. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 17th, 2007
10:51 pm [ankhanu]	Roger attacked the boy and pulled out half his greasy hair I don't know quite what it is, but here in Charlottetown, my hair just won't come clean. I stopped using shampoo about two years ago, instead just using water to rinse out my hair, to fine results. However, here, my hair just won't come clean and just gets greasy. I've had to buy some shampoo and use it now and again and I hate it. When I was in Saskatoon, I didn't use shampoo and my hair was fine, then when I went back to Sydney, I didn't shampoo and things were still peachy. I got back here and didn't shampoo and my hair is getting thickly greasy again. I don't know if it's the water chemistry, the lack lustre water pressure in the shower, or some combination thereof, but it sucks. Damn you shampoo!! (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, October 11th, 2007
12:39 pm [ankhanu]	It's been a while since a proper post... but I've been busy. Now that the poster is done with, I'm back to sorting the remaining sweep samples that I had to put aside earlier in September so that I could generate some data for my poster. It's tedious, but needs to be done. Now that the need to get results quickly has subsided, I plan to be in the lab a little less than I had been, and plan to leave every day (other than the days I TA from 6-9pm) by 5 or 7pm and enjoy some recreational time... take photos, play guitar, read, do nothing... As I mentioned, I was in Saskatoon for the ESC annual meeting with my poster presentation from 29 Sept-5 Oct.; the conference was enjoyable, the presentations, overall, were quite well done and many were pretty interesting (with a few notable exceptions), my poster didn't win the prize, but was certainly, imo, the most visually appealing. I took part in a little curation blitz with some of the other entomologists, organizing and IDing some of the insects from the University of Saskatchewan and Agriculture & Agri-Foods Canada collections for a few hours; that was enjoyable, but made me feel a little useless, as without the appropriate keys, I wasn't able to do too much species level IDing and lack the experience to do too many species without them. I roamed Saskatoon a bit while I was there. It was definitely fall there; while in the Maritimes there were hints of the leaves beginning to turn, the aspens along the Saskatchewan river were bright gold and the leaves were coming down. The area around the river was quite beautiful really; I enjoyed the city, but I don't think I'd want to stay too long. I did get to see my first black-billed magpies, which completely captivated me, as well as some northern shovelers and a western grebe. On my way to Saskatoon, I arrived in Halifax early and picked up finfin from the airport. We spent time in downtown Halifax, spending a fair bit of time at the Perks on teh waterfront, one of the few 24hr. places in town to sit and chat. Though we were both fairly tired, it was great to see him again. He is the roommate/person I spent the most time with when I lived in Halifax, and the one I connected with best... and I hadn't seen him since I went to Toronto in 2004 to see the Cure. I left him at Perks around 5am, after trying to find an open hostel to no avail, to head off to the airport for my flight. Was great to see ya man. After landing in Halifax on the 5th, I drove home for Thanksgiving weekend to be with the family. It was good to see the wife and daughter (and rest of the family), but I didn't get any of my course work done that I needed to :P Elania seems to have grown up (physically) a bit in the past month, and is loving school. asenjade Seems to be getting along ok, though she's not terribly happy about me not being there. She started her photography course at the beginning of the month though, so that should help. Lando was hit by a car in the middle of the month and died. asenjade has taken it fairly hard, and Elania was pretty upset, but they're getting along. He was a great cat and will be missed. It looks like I'll be starting in on a Dragon Lance D&D game with a guy who works in my lab starting this weekend. I have a couple character ideas to choose from at this point; there are already 4 characters covering most of the core group aspects, so I can kind of do whatever without much impact on niche coverage. So yeah, general life update. I have a couple topics to post on later if I think to actually do them :P (Comment on this)
Saturday, September 29th, 2007
4:36 am [ankhanu]	huh? It's 4:30am. I've been awake now for about 21hr. I'm sitting in Perks in Halifax with my old roommate, whom I hadn't seen since summer 2004, about to head off to the airport for this year's Entomological Society of Canada meeting in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. I've been pretty busy the past month, generating data, analyzing data and designing the poster I'm presenting at the conference. This week's been particularly busy, with very little food or sleep; but the conference should be fun. I'll have more to say later, just figured I'd post now for the Hell of it. I'll probably write a post or so on the plane, but for now... ( ESC ) (4 Comments |Comment on this)