Happy Thanksgiving

ByMatt

Holy crap it’s Thanksgiving already!  Well I’ve been thinking about what to make this post about. There are several great options: The real story of thanksgiving and how it became what we perceive it to be today, the start of the commercial materialism season, the nature of human behavior, and so on. But I think rather than the normal cynical post about our need to celebrate lies and propaganda, I’ll just fill you in with a brief update of what I’ve been up to.

For starters, it’s been a busy semester. The past month, I’ve been breeding the 3rd generation of selection fish with mixed success. Several families have produced over 200 eggs repeatedly, and even with the high mortality rates, we’re getting a good number of survivors. Some of the families have more trouble breeding than others, but at this point, I think we’ll have enough adults to test four families from each line.

I’ve been sitting on my data from the second generation since the summer ended, busy with teaching and class work. I don’t really have any options to wait anymore. In January, I’ll be presenting the results at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (or SICB) meeting in Charleston, SC.

Last week, I got to meet photographer and photojournalist Steve McCurry. His work for National Geographic is legendary and has been featured on the front covers for the past 30 years. It was neat to meet him in person, hear him speak, and see some of his work on display at WSU.

Erin and I had our second annual Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday. Last year we had a small affair with way too much food. This year, we invited many more people, mostly graduate students from the department, and ended up feeding 16. We had a good time and the food was great. The left-overs are dwindling down, but the turkey soup Erin made last night is to die for.

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