Death by Bug Conferences!

Greetings and salutations, my lovely, lovely readers.

So, as I mentioned in my last post, this week was yet another busy one.  My department had the task of hosting the Entomological Society of America's North Central Branch Meeting (ESA-NCB, or NCB) this year.  Wow.  Hosting a meeting is quite the task.  But, oh so fun!

I've attended meetings like this before and that in and of itself is exhausting, but hosting really takes it out of you!  Things got going each day circa 7:30am and quite often didn't shut down until well after midnight...welcome to partying with entomologists!  It was great fun, though.  I got to meet up with the moth gals who are on the grant with me, so that was fun to finally have faces to go with the voices from our Skype conference calls.  We got to sit and talk logistics and moths and just visit a number of times throughout the conference, which was great.  I also got to network with some parasitoid people which made my heart happy as I do miss working with my little wasps, quite a bit - here's to hoping I made Wharton proud!  I think the 2nd place ribbon that found its way onto my poster presentation just might have done the trick as far as making Wharton proud goes  :)  I actually got to have a lovely chat with him over the phone on the last day of the conference - oh how I do miss that man.

Ok, y'all, so here's a little bit of insight into ESA: student mixers are always...always...lame.  Like...oh man, I can't even describe it to y'all.  BUT!  UMN knows how to plan a party!  A group of my fellow grad students an alum and one of our rockin profs put a little band together and did they ever rock that party!!  We had a blast!  A few of us even woke up a bit sore the next morning from dancing so hard!  We loved our Ephemeropterals so much that when the night came to a close the ballroom was filled with shouts of, "ONE MORE SONG!  ONE MORE SONG!!"  Oh, it was awesome - and they were awesome to appease us.  There was even some crowd surfing!!  Yeah, we're pretty good at planning parties up here...it's whatevs  ;)

 All-in-all, the conference was a smash hit.  Lots of networking, visiting, talks, food, COFFEE, fun, dancing...super successful week  :)

But...that said...we are all DEAD right now.  I don't know that anyone has recovered fully yet.  Worth it?  I think yes.

However, our exhaustion was not a good enough excuse to simply allow St. Paddy's Day to pass us by without doing something!  So, after dealing with the set-back of a flat tire (yay, screws!) we all piled into my place with a big hunk of corned beef, a sac of potatoes, carrots, a massive head of cabbage, and a number of other ingredients to start about a 5hr-long ordeal in the kitchen.  Y'all, this was by far one of the best St. Patty's Days I've had to date.  I think I've discovered one of my favorite things to do: cook for hours on end with your favorite peoples, complete with lots of laughs and a jolly good time.  It was one of those days that cause you to sit down at it's close and simply smile with joy and appreciation as you say, "I absolutely love my life here."  What blessings those days are!

So, just what had us in the kitchen for so long?  Well, if  you've never made corned beef and cabbage, it's quite a lengthy dish to prepare - the meat was in the pot from about 5:30/6-10pm.  But, oh so worth the wait!  While that was simmering away on the stove Callie and I set to work on the Irish soda bread with some help from Meg.  Once that was in the oven it was time to get to work on the chocolate Guinness cupcakes (yeah...they taste as awesome as the sound!) complete with GREEN cream cheese icing.  We also tossed up a rather large salad for good measure ;) We had some green beers mixed in there as well, and, of course, the Guinness was around...if anyone can figure out how to turn that stuff green, let me know - we didn't even attempt it.  We didn't stop to think about taking pictures of everything until well after we had consumed most/all of it...but, here's what's left of the soda bread - so, so tasty!

Yesterday was a bit of a recovery day as we didn't call it a night on Friday until after midnight - and another late night piled on top of a week of no sleep made for quite a groggy crew.  Meg and Mark and I did take Jakers out for a nice walk yesterday, though - it was in the high 30s/low 40s!!  Lovely springtime weather  :)  And then we decided some Chinese takeout complete with a movie and ice cream drumsticks was all in order - made for a great afternoon of vegging :)

Today is a make up for lost time day...studying, still cleaning the kitchen (haha - sooo worth it), etc.

This has been a really good week...though we are all wishing we had a bit more of a break for spring break...ah well, such is life  :)

What's new with you?!

I'll do a joy post tomorrow, making up for not posting last week's and I'll do this week's as well.

Hope y'all are finding joy in your everyday!

Shalom,
~MW