Hairy Museum of Natural History

Well, folks, it looks like the month of December is going to be hairier than usual around HMNH HQ. At the top of the list are some thrilling but time-consuming deadlines from the day job rushing towards me, including a set of illustrations for a new exhibit opening this spring, but needed by January in order to flesh out a little publication that has to be printed and ready to distribute by opening day. Sorry to be so tight-lipped about this project, but there should be more to say very soon!

The upside is that I’m making more time during the normal workdays to paint. The downside is that I’m squeezing it in alongside several other duties that are coalescing around the same exhibit. Actually, that isn’t really a downside, since everything I’m working on is pretty exciting—the real downside is that it will be bleeding into more personal time as the holidays approach. Postings here may tend to be a bit sporadic over the next few weeks as a result.

In anticipation of this, I’ve bitten the bullet and ordered a long-overdue replacement to my aging computer. I’m hoping it will help me accomplish the tasks ahead at blazing speed, but I’m sure its main function will be to serve as a shiny bit of positive reinforcement when I need to hunker down and plug away at some image files or layouts.

Speaking of layouts, I’ve been threatening to redesign this site for a couple of months now, so I really should add that to the list of things that need my attention this month. When I last mentioned it, a couple of comments encouraged me to retire the Titanophoneus skull that has grinned out from the HMNH logo for the past three years, in favor of something a little more appropriately hairy. I haven’t quite settled on what will replace it just yet, but there are a couple of fruitful possibilities…

…so, just off the cuff, is there a kind reader out there able to send me a PDF of the following article?

Hopson & Kitching 2001. A probainognathian cynodont from South Africa and the phylogeny of non-mammalian cynodonts. Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, 156, p.5-35.

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Rogaine, The Day Job.