Monday evening things

 *It was just another hard day. Long, lab was hard, partly because people didn't pay full attention to my suggestions and so it took more than a half-hour past the scheduled end time (anyone with a class after did finish up in time, at least). 

And then there was a miscommunication which reminded me how messed up it is having us report things to one person rather than some kind of departmental mailbox; the person who needed the information was out at a 10 day conference (but I didn't know that, because how could I?) and the information I sent to THEM was not received, and that made ME look bad. Eventually I got it sorted but it took yet another half-hour of my time. 

I did manage to get in the workout I just didn't have the energy to do this morning, but it meant that I didn't have as much time "for myself" as I wanted this evening.

* I have mostly been working on the big afghan, but of course haven't added a lot (a row takes a long time, and as I said, I had little time this evenings. It's a bit less than 4' long at this point; I have about half of one ball of yarn left, and then another whole one. Ideally, I'd like to get it to 6' long or longer, if I have enough yarn and don't totally burn out on the project.

* Also something I ordered came. I had seen this stuffed Gorgonops at "Paleozoic Pals" (an online gift shop that supports the Paleozoic Research institute) but when I saw it a few months back, it was out of stock.

Well, it came back into stock and I decided to order one because it's a wonderfully goofy thing. Basically it's a therapsid, which is an early-model mammal, so it's kind of "What if dog, but lizard?" and I find that kind of thing amusing. 

The specific model is Gorgonops torvus, the type species (this is a thing especially in fossils), so I have named him Torvald.

He is kind of adorably goofy

I will say I've also seen reconstructions with a more canine-like head (this one has a rather lizard like head), but of course every reconstruction is a total guess - these things could have had big floppy ears, or been bright colors, or whatever. There are a few dinosaur specimens that have been found with a hint of what might be feathers, and of course muscle and fatty tissue don't preserve, so they tend to reconstruct them as "shrinkwraps," where there's sort of minimal fat and muscle beyond what muscles would be needed for moving about. So it's also possible a dino could look more like this:

(From: troposaurus)

So Gorgonops could have been more doglike, or more feline, in its looks, and maybe had stripes or spots.