Thesis Completed

I defended August 9- in all honest the oral exam wasn't nearly as tough as I had anticipated, although there were a few strange questions from my external: "which gene do you think would work best for creating a phylogeny?" (FYI, I didn't do any genetics or molec work during my thesis.). I also spoke before thinking, and told my supervisor that his question asking me to define a genus was "RATHER OBSCURE". After taking the thirty minutes or so to make the corrections to my thesis, it took a week to get all the printing and paperwork done. My thesis was submitted to the university last Thursday. Hopefully it will be bound and ready for pick up before I move.

Speaking of moving, movers are coming to pick up my stuff on August 30 and we have to vacate our apartment on August 31. We are going to try to spend the night of the 31st at a friend (who is kind enough to accept us and our cats) before flying out to Halifax on September 1st. We should be arriving in NS around 9:30pm. Furniture should be arriving on Sept. 3. Five days without furniture is a while, but much better than the last time when it took 12 days for our stuff to arrive in Guelph from Fredericton.

Raining in Axelrod

It was a very exciting day here in my lab on the day I defended.

Hot Days

The temperature here in Guelph is insane: currently 32C and 44C (humidex). Last night the temperature didn't go below 37C (humidex). With our apartment on the third floor and no air circulation from the windows, it was a sweaty, uncomfortable night. That cat's probably had a worse time of it. When the apartment is warm they lay in the cold (empty) bathtub.

Temperature is forcast to continue to climb today (to about 36C and 49C-humidex) and not cool very much tonight. But hopefully a cold fron will pass though on Wednesday.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thesis Update:

Defense next Wednesday at 9:30am followed by a 2-hour oral examination. Then end is almost close enought to touch.

After the defense I have about 2 weeks of paper work to finish.