Movember comes to an end and so does my moustache

 Movember is an annual month long event where males register to a charity and grow moustaches to raise money and awareness for prostate cancer. So we formed a group at the university. As today is the last day of November, I will be shaving off my moustache tonight, but I did not want to deprave you of the opportunity to gaze upon the grandeur that is my moustached face. Here is a picture of the group of us from the university.

The Conference was a Thriller (pun intended, read below)

So I never actually filled everyone in on how my most recent conference went. It was the annual Aquatic Toxicology Workshop. Personally, although the turnout for my presentation was low I thought I gave a much better presentation than I did in B.C. The aquaculture section which I presented in was the smallest with only three presenters including myself. So I did not anticipate a big showing. However several St. Andrews Biological Research Station employees I used to work with came to support me. I am sure there was probably more pertinent talks they could have attended so it was a nice gesture.

The banquet was excellent. There was free wine from a Niagara winery I can no longer recall the name of. I had delicious walleye as my main course and apple pie a la mode for dessert. The best part however was that a professional Toronto dance troupe was hired as entertainment. Before the first course they performed a Bollywood dance. After the second course they performed a traditional Afrikaans dance number and for the third course they had a tribute dance routine to a medley of Michael Jackson songs. Following this they came out into the audience to wrangle unsuspecting biologists to dance the Michael Jackson Thriller dance of which I was one. There is nothing quite as amusing as watching inebriated scientists trying to learn Thriller. Anyway below is a picture of me learning the Thriller (I am the tall one in orange).

 

My next conference may be in Chile at the Universidad de Valparaiso. Although this is still entirely tentative. Chile is one of the largest aquaculture production countries in the world (much larger than Canada). My supervisor just returned and apparently they are interested in the research I am conducting. I guess we’ll see.

We finally finished the left over turkey I cooked three weeks ago. The turkey turned out fabulous but there was soooo much of it. I only bought a twelve pound turkey but it was more than enough for two. So I made turkey pot pie, turkey quesadillas, and turkey a la king. Needless to say I won’t be making turkey again soon. I’ve been making pies too; apple, pumpkin and lemon from scratch rather than a can. The lemon turned out a bit watery but otherwise good.

 

We didn’t do too much for Halloween last night aside from carve pumpkins. We stayed in and watched a scary movie (The Unborn) and snacked on Jenn’s homemade guacamole.  Yum!