New exhibit at Tyrrell Museum

May 22 is the opening of the latest exhibit at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller, Alberta. It's in celebration of their 25th anniversary. They've chosen 25 amazing specimens to put on display. You can see photos of the specimens on their Flickr site here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tyrrellmuseum/with/4606976945/. The exhibit is entitled "Alberta Unearthed: Twenty-five stories of discovery". I'm looking forward to seeing it and hope you are too!

The above picture is one of the specimens, a Tyrannosaurus rex called Black Beauty. The image was shamelessly stolen from the Tyrrell Flickr page.

D-Day approaches

So tomorrow at 2PM is my 2 hour oral candidacy exam. I don't think I've been this stressed out since I got divorced over a dozen years ago. Today I went through all the different stages of grief, with an especially long time spent on anger. Mainly it pisses me off that I have to go through all of this to prove my academic worthiness when I've already completed a masters degree. I guess I could see it if someone goes from completing their bachelors right into a PhD, but did my 2.5 years of research count for nothing? I guess not. Sigh.

Tonight I'm to the point where if I fail, that will be fine because in all the years I did accounting I never felt this beat up. So maybe accounting wasn't that bad after all.

So wish me luck tomorrow. I'm pretty disillusioned about the entire thing and I'm suspicious that I won't feel any better about it when it's over - no matter how it turns out. T minus 16 hours and counting...

Horned Dinosaur Book

The latest on the "New Perspectives on Horned Dinosaurs" book is that it will be released on May 28, 2010. I'm crossing my fingers, although after all the other delays I won't really believe it until I have it in my hot little hands. :D