Update, post-the events of 2011

Hello lovely readers,

I know it's been, quite literally, months since I've actually let you into my life and told you anything of what's been happening up in the Frozen Tundra.  There are a multitude of reasons for that, but I won't go into them or try to excuse my absence.  I have been absent...it happened, and for that I am sorry, but I am going to try to remedy that now.

I'm going to do this in a sort of timeline manner to try to paint a little picture of the close of my summer, the entirety of my fall, and the beginnings of my winter.  (Sorry the actual pictures included are poor quality...yay, iPhone pictures!!)

Here we go:

August

• After returning from my amazing time in Arizona things picked up rather quickly.  
• I am still processing the remainder of my material from AZ...I'm not sure if that will ever actually get done...ok, ok, it will eveeeentually get done, but it's going to be quite the slow and long process.
• We did indeed get all moved into the house, though we are still quite far from being settled.  Just as the moving-in process was beginning, one of my roommates lost their father to a heart attack.  That event kind of set the tone for the remainder of our fall.  We ended up spending a lot of time out in Wisconsin helping Justin and his family with the aftermath of the sudden loss.  We helped them clean up and sort through the items in the house in preparation for an estate sale that took place in October.  We are still working on the house and land, getting it all ready to go on the market in the spring.  But, all that aside, we are no longer homeless and very much enjoy our new digs...I'll try to post some pictures later this week or early next week...emphasis on try.

September

• I finally experienced the Minnesota State Fair...though I failed horribly and didn't take a single picture...that I can recall.  I know...I fail...I'll try to do better next time.  But, it was a pretty ridiculous experience.  I went to the milk station where you can get all the milk you can drink for a buck!  Yup, unlimited milk for $1.  I also got various fried foods on sticks...like bacon...dipped in chocolate!!  Sounds gross, but it was amazing, for serious.  Saw lots of neat things, like lamb-ikins being born and little, just-born piggies nursing away - so stinking cute!  I can't wait to finally grow up so I can have a pig or two again.
• We also welcomed a new cohort of grad students into the department.  I think there were 11 or so new students and we are big fans of them.  Super fun people and all of them are real go-getters.  Win!
• On a similar note I took up the responsibilities of co-secretary of our grad student organization, Frenatae...yes, co-secretary...we have a lot of stuff to do, y'all!  It's been...an experience.  I'd forgotten how much drama can arise from officership.  Ah well...it's still fun.
• September also included a very fun and tasty BBQ hosted by my small group leader and his family.  It was nice to get everyone together again, after the busy summer, for some good food and fellowship.
• Towards the end of the month I played hookie with my sweet lab mate, R, for about a half a day.  We took a little trip downtown so she could get her registration packet for the Twin Cities Marathon, which she survived like a champ, got some free stuff from the vendors and then took a little road trip out to Stillwater.  This was one of the best days ever.  We started out by getting the most outstanding grilled cheese sandwiches you could ever imagine at the co-op and popped next door to Northern Vineyards Winery for a glass of wine to go with our lovely sandwiches.  We ate up on their deck, overlooking the St. Croix River.  It was lovely, to say the least.  We then strolled down Main Street perusing and spending much monies at shops like Tremblay's Sweet Shop (saltwater taffy!!), Stillwater Olive Oil Co. (nearly died in there...soooo much goodness!),  St. Croix Antiquarian Booksellers (so much win!), and a number of other fun spots.  After our adventures in Stillwater we weren't quite done having our girls' day.  We made our way down to Saint Croix Vineyards for a wine tasting and some perusing around the apple orchard and country shop.  The wine tasting was soooo good.  We even got our own little score cards and everything to rate the wines we liked, didn't like, etc...  Such a simple, fun, grownup thing to do  :)  I was a big fan of their summer red and the raspberry infusion dessert wine - so delish.  But!  We were not finished with our day!  An afternoon's worth of good food and spirits in our bellies and jars of heavenly honey butter and a number of other goodies in-hand, we made our way back to the cities to pick up some yummies for our lab sushi night at RH's lovely home.  We have a pretty great advisor...I must say.  Closing the night off with our co-workers and RH's wonderful family made an already outstanding day even better.  It was one for the books, to be sure.

October

• October got off to a decent start with Frenatae Pig's Eyes and scarf dying and shrunken head (made out of apples...not people...don't freak out) making as we started gearing up for the honey sale in December and the annual Ento Department Halloween Party, of course.
• Unfortunately, while the beginning of October was full of fun, it also brought much sadness and loss.  On October 5th, my Grandpa Jack left this world on earth and went to be with the Father in perfection.  
• This was very unexpected for all of us and has thus been extremely difficult to process...even today.  I think having lost Grandma just a year and half or so before made Grandpa's death all the more difficult - they are both gone.  And I miss them tremendously.  It isn't uncommon for me to find myself bursting into tears of loss and pain, even today, 3 months later.  I miss them both terribly, and while I can rejoice and have comfort in knowing that they are with the Father, my human nature wants them here with me.  Somehow the world is more empty to me.  It's quite strange.  I want them to be there when I get my next degree...when I get married...when I have children...  I want to share my life with them, but that isn't an option anymore.  I struggle continuously with curbing my bitterness towards this loss.  I so often find myself saying, "This isn't fair!!  Why did they have to be taken so early?!  Wasn't one enough??  Why both??"  And then I think of my father...while I have lost my beloved grandparents, he has lost his parents...I can't even imagine that loss.  It breaks my heart to think of it and to think of the pain and emptiness he must experience with this.  We didn't talk about Grandma and Grandpa all that much at Christmas, but I think it was evident to all of us that they were on our minds the whole time.  You are incredibly loved and painfully missed, Grandpa.

• With mourning comes the comfort of family, though.  Grandpa's funeral was held in Sacramento on the 22nd and with that we were able to see a lot of family and old friends from California we had not seen in a long time.  How interesting it is that we can find joy even in such sad reunions.
• Immediately following the funeral I made my first museum trip.  I hopped down to LA to work in the L.A. County Museum of Natural History for a few days to look at the material they have there that pertains to my research.  It was a fast few days and I wished I had more time to spend there, but I was able to get everything done, though I was working down to the wire.  And, it was an incredible learning experience.
• As soon as I got back to the Tundra from CA I went and saw The PhD Movie with R and another grad student friend of ours - oh that movie was so sad and yet so true!!  It was a dorky, fun evening of free movie-ing and popcorn-ing.  
• A day later was the Halloween Party, which was also fun, though I must admit that I wasn't exactly in the mood for a party, given the events of the month...but I was glad I went and it was fun to see everyone again after having been away in CA.
• There were a number of parties being hosted that weekend by friends of mine that I had initially resigned to not attend...as was tired and still very much in mourning, and just didn't want to be around a lot of hoopla and hollering that comes along with high energy parties that include costumes...  But, of course, as I am often a sucker for the pleas of my friends I agreed at the last minute to attend.  My costume?  A black t-shirt that painted the words, "Go Ceiling!!" on...complete with crepe paper pom-poms.  What was I?  A Ceiling Fan.  Yup, you read that correctly.  And, I actually have a picture for you!  

             And that closed out October.

November

• Was another busy, busy month as we were all preparing our presentations and posters for the Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America held in Reno, NV.
• But!  Before the month got too far underway, R and I had a baking, "knitting", music, movie night.  I say "knitting" because we never actually got around to that part of our evening...we did go to the craft store and get supplies...we just got a little too caught up in our bacon biscuits and movie watching and music listening...  It was a fabulous evening of goodness, though.  R takes such good care of me - whatever am I going to do without her for the next 9mo?!  She got a fellowship to go work on her research at the Smithsonian for 9mo and heads out east in just a few days...I'm going to miss her something fierce!
• The next week, R and myself, and a few other of our fellow grad students made our way down to St. Olaf's in Northfield to talk to a class of undergrads about our research and life as grad students.  It was pretty spectacular.  I love working with students and seeing them excited about new things to learn about and options for their futures, etc.  I actually had a girl contact me later about potential advisors down at A&M!  Gig'em, Ags!
• That weekend a slew of us headed off to Reno for the ESA meeting.  What a week that was.  I took my fancy poster and notebooks and notes, etc... and was ready to network and learn me some stuffs.  Well...while both of those things happend...the meeting was kind of lame this year.  That was mostly the case because I was somewhat ill the entire time I was in Reno.  If you've ever been to Reno and enjoy it there...I'm sorry, I do not share that sentiment.  From the moment I set foot in that town I didn't feel well at all.  I think it had much to do with the fact that every inch of that town is completely saturated with cigarette smoke.  Normally smoke doesn't bother me so much, but when it saturates everything and the air is stale with it...it's awful.  It's also incredibly dry there and my nose was bleeding pretty regularly by the end of the meeting...lamez!  Other than that, the meeting was pretty successful.  Made lots of contacts, reconnected with old friends, like Wharton and a number of other awesomes from A&M and other places.  It was good.
• As soon as the meeting was over, my sweet sister-in-law, Shyla drove 3hrs from Chico to collect me and take me across those lovely mountains to the California side for some much needed R&R and Big Brother and Big Sister time.  I don't know that I would have survived last semester without that short respite.  We did lots of lounging and good eating, lots of Game of Thrones watching (epic!) and YouTubing, saw some good musics, tromped around their fabulous farmers market and got me some of my favorite soap ever, and, of course, did some trekking around that beautiful CA landscape.  We took an awesome day hike on Table Mountain and found some waterfalls, and pretty trees, and cows, and lichens, and, and, and...awesome.  The visit was, as always, all too short, but wonderful, nonetheless.

Honey Run Covered Bridge - 1894

 Cows!  Or giant beasties as Sean would say...

How gorgeous is all of this?! 

              That's definitely a waterfall!  :)

 Sean & Shyla on our trek back from the waterfall

• As soon as I got back to MN I went into overdrive on my mater's thesis proposal seminar.  What on earth is that, you might ask??  That is the equivalent of 45min of me standing in front of my entire department, presenting a lecture on my research topic and what I have done/found so far, along with 15 or so min of them all asking me whatever question(s) they want...oh, not to mention the fact that each and every one of them has a grading sheet in front of them and they score me as they see fit....  A couple months ago I would have said, "Shoot me." to that description, but now that it's all done and over and I passed with flying colors, and I can say with a shrug, "Meh...it's not so bad."  Once I got going it was actually kind of fun...crazy, I know.  But, here's the thing: it was me teaching a room full of scientists who have (I should now say had) no idea what I'm talking about and actually want to learn about what I have to say, even though the majority of them were dreading my talk because they find taxonomy and systematics to be boring and useless (they are so wrong...and have since been educated otherwise, whoop!).  It was awesome.  And, having those people, professors included, who were dreading sitting in that lecture room for an hour listening to me talk about taxonomy and systematics come up to me afterwards or comment at the opener of their question that they actually really enjoyed my talk and were fascinated to learn about how I do what it is that I do is one of the best feelings in the world.  Like, woah - speechless.
• Following my proposal seminar was the honey filling party - in prep for our annual honey sale - it was a nice close to a hectic day, followed by a couple rounds and the watching the World Series at Grumpy's.

December

• The weekend following my seminar I was a judge at the annual Insect Fair, put on by Monarchs in the Classroom each year.  This is, essentially, a giant science fair dedicated to...bugs!!  So awesome.  It was an exhausting but wonderful experience.  I love talking with kids about science and getting them to think critically about their projects and what could account for their results or if there are more questions they can ask to learn even more about what their project focused on, etc.  Yay, science!  I also got to see my sweet friend, Christine, that weekend, as she was back in town for a few days.  Love her!
• After the Insect Fair it was Honey Sale prep ALL THE WAY.  Not to mention getting ready for my trip to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History...wait...what?!  Yeah...I'll get to that  :)  The Honey Sale went pretty well (honey shortage and all!), with only a few minor hiccups along the way - now we know some things to account for with our new items (insect dyed scarves, etc...) in preparation for next year's sale.  Done and done.  Whew!
• Now, on to the Smithsonian.  Remember how I went to the LA County Museum of Natural History for a few days to work in the collection and do research??  Well, my dear ones, I got to do the same thing at the Smithsonian!!  Yeah, I got my own security access badge/key and EVRYthing!  It. Was. Awesome.  It was like Christmas everyday in there.  I was continuously finding little gems and things in the collection and working with the curators there, Don Harvey especially, was incredible.  I would have lost without Don.  By the end of my week there he and I hardly to speak to one another in order to communicate - we would look around for something and the other would hand that misplaced or overlooked item to the other...kind of awesome.  Being able to look at the type specimens in the collection was incredible, too, and so so helpful for my research.  Type specimens are the original specimens that a species or genus is described from - the very specimens that the author looked at when he/she described the organism!!  Pinch me!  What amazing pieces of history that I was afforded the opportunity to look at, handle, and admire.  It was a blitz of a trip, but such an incredible learning experience.
• Upon my return from DC I just enough time to get a few errands taken care of, make one last trip out to help Justin in Menominee before the holidays and take a little trip to the lovely Betty Ann's nursery to collect some very special violets for my Mamma - Betty Ann was such a delight and I've already promised her that I'll be back in the spring to see her gardens all in bloom.  Can't wait!  After all of that it was time to head home to my Texas...finally.
• I made it down to Arlington the day before my Pop's birthday, which also happened to be C-fizzle's Eagle Scout Court of Honor.  That's right, my littles bro is a baller...it's fine, you can be jealous.  Look at this good lookin' kid!

• Sean and Shyla's flight got uuuber delayed so they weren't able to make in time for the court of honor, but they made it a little afterwards.  It was so wonderful to have everyone together this Christmas, especially after the trials the summer and fall had brought for all of us.

• Christmas was wonderfully low-key and full of much family time and laughter and simply enjoying one another's company.  Who could have asked for more??  We were also able to get the whole of my mom's side of the family ALL together for the first time ever.  It was an awesome time with aunts and uncles and cousins we haven't seen in ages...and one little new one most of us had yet to meet.
• I was also able to catch up with a number of lovely friends while I was home for the holidays and my sweet Miss Susie, oh how I love her...It has come to my attention that she and I never take pictures when we go for our now traditional Chuy's lunches...hmmm...next time, Miss Susie!!!

My sweet high school loves - how I love our reunions.

My precious Buntes made a stop in A-Town!!

January (Plus the last couple days of December...)

• New Year's held a trip to the wonderful Austin to stay with my sweet Ponders and see even more lovelies from college.  Whoop!  I also got to visit with my wonderful cousins and Aunt June again, which was so wonderful.  I got my bridesmaid dress all ordered for precious Kristen's wedding and got to have a woooonderful lunch at Kerbey Lane with all of my Austin gals + Kristen (she's still in our sweet, sweet Aggieland...lucky duck!).  New Year's eve was a nice low-key get together at the Ponder's, complete with Apples to Apples and The Nelson Game - college favorites.  After all of the "old people" turned in for the night JP and B and I closed out our shenanigans with some Mario Kart and Call of Duty (the latter I simply watched...it's much more enjoyable for everyone that way).  I got start off 2012 with a lovely time of worship with the Ponders and B, followed by some tasty Texas BBQ and time with precious friends before I made the trip back to the Metroplex.

My sweet bestie Elaine and Josh - it wouldn't be a reunion without a 

goofy picture of the 3 of us like this one

My all too precious Tara               B...nuff said         .

             Darling Alyssa         Wonderful, wonderful Kristen

• Before I left my Texas-land I got to visit more with Catia and her Elaine - which was a wonderful time of chatting, munching, and Spinal Tapping it up.  I also got to see Mission Impossible with the Mamma!!!  Yup - it's tradition that she and I see these amaaaazing films in the theaters and we managed to squeeze it in the day that I left!  Whew!  That was a close one!
• I was quite sad to leave Texas, but must admit that I was looking forward to going...home...where my life is now.  Although, I was only afforded a day in the Tundra before I had to pick up and hit the road again...story of my life!!!  I am now in FL, at the McGuire Center in Gainesville...doing, you guessed it, research!  This is my last museum trip for a while, though.  The next one is a bit of a secret and you won't get to find out where I'm going until this summer...sorry kids,  I just can't tell you yet!  I get to go home tomorrow, though!  I canNOT wait.  I miss my bed...I miss my Tundra peeps...I miss my critters!!!!

Well, I hope you have all enjoyed the run-down...sorry it's taken so long to get this update out.  And, no, I have not forgotten that I still owe you pictures from AZ...working on it...

Hope you all had a wonderfully blessed holiday season.

Shalom & Blessings,

~MW

P.S. - My Big Bro just started up a new blogitty for this year.  Check it!

Pretty much sums it up...!

Ok...so...I know I haven't posted at all this semester.  I. Am. Sorry.

Christmas break is nearing and I hope to update you all at that time.

Until then, I want to give you a little explanation for some of my lack of existence in the blogger world this semester.

Go check out this blog post and you just might catch a little glimpse of my life this semester  ;)

ENJOY!


Love and miss you all,
~MW

Lep Course, Final Update

A very late final Arizona update…  My apologies!  The Tundra is just so busy!! 

OK, so I left off on Thursday of last week.  I’m so sorry I didn’t update y’all right after we got back from collecting in the desert!!  Why??  Because, it. was. awesome!!!  We all got some really great moths for our collections among other things (I found a bristle tail!  Baller!!  I’ve never seen one in real life and those things are triiiicky to catch – so jumpy!).  I must say, that the highlight of my night, and nearly of the week, happened back at the station, though.

Once we got back to the station we all started processing some of the goodies we picked up in the desert and I decided to “just go check” and see what the station sheets brought in, since we had decided to let those run while we were in the desert.  As I was walking up the hill to check one of my favorite sites I started to realize something: “I’m an idiot!  There are mountain lions out here and I’m going by myself to look at a stupid sheet hung between two trees with a light to try to find some moths…I’ve lost my marbles, officially…”  So, upon that realization you would have thought I would have turned around, right?  One would think, but no I had already committed and was a little over halfway to the sheet so I just flashed my head lamp around a whole lot as I walked and quickened my pace a little bit…as did my heart rate  ;)  I felt much better once I got to the sheet, for some reason the light of the mercury vapor lamp was comforting and made me feel safe (don’t ask why…I was crazy that night…blame it on the lack of sleep??).  I started on the front side of the sheet and got a few cuties then moseyed around to the back side of the sheet and grabbed a few more goodies.  While I was checking out the back of the sheet I saw something rather large land on the front side – all I could see was its silhouette, and I had no idea what it could have been.  The only things we had been seeing of that size were sphinx moths and knew without a doubt that it was not a sphinx.  So…naturally, I walked around to the other side of the sheet to see the beast.  Y’all…again, I nearly peed my pants.  It was a Dysschema howardi!!!  This beauty is the largest tiger moth member in North America!  And it is goooorgeous.  Typically moths of this size (same goes for most sphinx moths and a few others) aren’t killed using a kill jar…it takes them too long to settle down and they end up shredding their wings and just beating themselves to death instead of passing out first like the little guys.  So, for the sake of the moth and the preservation of the specimen we inject them to speed up the process.  I, however, of course, did not have a syringe on me…neeeeat.  So, what did I do??  Well, I couldn’t just leave it there!  It was the only one we had seen the entire week and the only one anyone had seen the entire summer – it, at the very least, needed to be documented.  So I plucked that pretty off the sheet with my fingers, gathered up my kill jars, and ran (yes, ran) down the hill back to the labs to find someone with more knowledge who could help me decide what to do with my gem.

When I got to the bottom of the hill I ran passed a number of my favorite mothers chillaxing at one of the picnic tables – I so wanted to stop but I was on a mission and I had to take care of the moth first  :)  When I got inside the lab room I saw that Hugh was in there – excellent!  Hugh was our course curator and he, like all of the instructors, has a wealth of knowledge about preserving specimens.  I ran over to him, held out my hand and said, “Hugh!  Help!”  He looked up from his scope and just about fell out of his chair, looked at me with the biggest grin and said, “You’ve got to be kidding me!”  All I could do was shake my head in response.  He stands up and says, “To the lab!”  We ran down to his curation lab where he had all of his supplies stored and he did the deed for me, preserving my beauty in perfect condition.  Hugh injects with ammonia, instead of ethanol, because it works immediately (seriously, the thing was out in about half a second) and keeps the specimen pliable for longer – allowing for a smoother mounting and spreading process (mounting: placing the specimen on a pin; spreading: spreading the wings into a position that reveals the color patterns and morphological characters…also makes them pretty to look at).  **sigh**  My moth was taken care of and after asking Hugh if he needed her for the station’s synoptic collection and him assuring me that the male-female pair in the collection would suffice and that the moth was all mine and if anyone tried to take her away from that he would set them straight we marked back to the course labs and we showed her off to everyone.  It was pretty humorous…people started coming out from the woodwork it seemed!  From that moment on one of three things happened pre-collecting each night: (1) people threatened to hog-tie me so that I couldn’t get the good ones before them (there were a few other beauties I had in my possession that people were jealous of…), (2) people wanted to rub some of my luck onto them, (3) people wanted to make sure that I was at their sheet while we were collecting.  It was pretty funny.

OK, enough ogling over my moth collection…  ;)

The rest of the trip was just as incredible as the first half was.  It was such a blessing to be able to be in the presence of and build relationships with the lep gurus of today.  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t star-struck the entire week.  I now have some remarkable friends and connections to help me along as I continue in the field…at least for the next two years.  Again, I’d be lying if I said that this last week didn’t make me want to reconsider the idea of finishing my master’s and moving forward to get a PhD in the field…I really do enjoy research.  And the collaboration that goes along with the community is so fun and allows for a broadening of knowledge that is priceless.  I think I’d be much happier in a museum position than I would be in a professorship, though.  But, I still have at least 2 years to figure out all of that, for now I am enjoying my time in the community and enjoying my project.  I got a lot of pointers and clues about my group while I was I AZ, as well.  Like I said, priceless.

Our last official night of the course (there was a scheduling faux pas and all of the instructors headed out a day before the students were told to leave…woops!) was an absolute blast (surprised, much?).  After dinner we all piled into vans and trucks and made our way over to New Mexico for some non-collecting fun at the Rodeo Tavern.  The instructors had been talking this place up all week, so by the time Saturday night arrived we were all beyond excited to finally make our way to the little hole-in-the-wall.

This place was a hoot!  We upped the customer count by about 5 times…and so probably doubled their weekly earnings!  It was fun watching the locals watch us – a few of those cowboys tried to play it smooth on the dance floor, too, it was too funny.  But those locals sure knew how to play pool!  I don’t think our people (and we actually had some really good players) won but one match against those cowboys.  We all took a couple turns around the dance floor – I even got out there a couple times.  I tried to tell Jim that just because I’m from Texas does not mean that I know how to two-step…he laughed and pulled me out onto the floor anyways.  We decided to blame my lack of dancing skills on the fact that I was wearing chacos – that’s right, two-stepping in chacos.  How’s that for a mental image??  Gotta love entomologists, am I right?  We closed the tavern down (at about midnight…who closes that early??) and headed back to the station to continue our final hoorah before a good chunk of people left the next day.  I think we finally called it a night around 2 or 3am…so just about right on time for most of us!

Sunday consisted of clean-up, packing, and farewells…talk about depressing.  It was like being at summer camp and leaving all those awesome new friends and counselors who had been your life for that last week.  Isn’t it amazing how quickly people can get to know each other and build relationships when you’re surrounded by each other 24-7?  I just love that about people.  Oh!  I almost forgot!  I got up extra early Sunday morning to hit the road with Hugh.  He had set up a few extra light traps out and about the desert and other areas Saturday night and I told him I would help him take them down.  So we headed out around 6am and started collecting traps.  We had a great time driving around on empty, gathering the traps, and chatting the early morning away.  We got back just in time to catch the tail-end of breakfast and then set to sorting the traps with everyone for one final moth search before we got the clean-up and farewells.  In those traps is where I found my second Euchaetes zella!!  It was my last once-over on a whim at one of the traps I hadn’t picked through yet and caught the corner of a wing out of the corner of my eye and thought, “No way that’s a zella…”  I picked it out from under a couple other moths, flipped it over and, sure enough, it was indeed a zella!  It was rather thrilling, to say the least.

Sigh…I still can’t believe that week is over and I’m back in the Tundra getting back to the old grind…  I so wanted to stay in that hidden-away oasis.  It was so refreshing to be unplugged for that week with some internet access here and there…when it decided to behave.  I never carried my phone on me…that never happens.  It’s practically glued to my pocket here.  I’m going to work on making it less of an appendage of my body.  I’ll still have it on and around, but I’m going to work on not having it a finger’s length away so much.  Aside from being unplugged that week in AZ was just what the doctor ordered for my mental and physical health.  It’s been a rather stressful summer on my front and I’m convinced that is why I’ve been feeling so poorly the last few months (headaches, body aches, migraines, etc…).  By the second day-in in those gorgeous mountains I was feeling so good, even though I wasn’t sleeping, that it was a no-brainer…stress = bad news bears!  Everyone needs to really stop and leave the stressors for some amount of time – even if it’s only a day or two.  I also need to be better about eating full meals…it didn’t matter how tired and run-down I was going into a meal at the station, by the time I left the mess hall I was feeling completely re-energized and ready to tackle some more moths!  Lesson learned…I need to rest and I need to eat (better). 

Well, now that I’m back home I’ve been processing my specimens from AZ (once they are all spread I'll show y'all the goods!) and trying to get back into the swing of life in the city.  The moving process has also begun.  We got most of Megan and Justin’s things moved yesterday and today we are taking the bulk of my stuff.  We can’t move into the house until Thursday, but we have access to the garage for now, so we’ve been piling as much into that as we can while we have access to Justin’s parents’ truck and trailer.

And, with that, dear ones, I’m off to get back to the packing!  Can’t wait to give y’all a “tour” of the new place once we are all settled in,

Praying your Sunday is a blessed one.

Lots of love,

~MW

Lep Course, Day 5

18 Aug 2011

Why helloooo, there!

Ummm…wow…I canNOT believe that it is already Thursday!!!  How did this happen?!?!  Time is so fleeting, per usual.

Mercy it’s been a long week, though.

So, remember that time we were supposed to have lectures and such until 2am?  Well, that plan changed a little bit, but not in my favor.  The lectures got moved around and so we were left to collecting circa midnight.  At this point, I decided that I was going to grab a couple hours of sleep and get up at 2am to go hunt down some moths for a couple hours and then head back to bed.  And, that my dear ones is exactly what I did…well, sort of…

I got up at 2am, sans alam clock even!  How that happened, I have no idea.  Anyways, I went off hunting and actually happened across a fair bit of stuff that I hadn’t seen/collected yet, so that was super exciting.  But…haha….here’s where my plan changed…I ended up staying out until 6am.  Yep…6am, folks.  Dedication?  Maybe…probably more insanity  ;)  I was looking super intensely for some of my moths, but, alas, I did not find a single one.  I found a member of one of my outgroups…but no Euchaetes.  Booo….   I was not happy.  Especially when I realized it was 6am and was just going to bed – yeah, breakfast is at 7:30, ha! 

Needless to say, that made yesterday an incredibly long day.  I had to duck out during one of our wetlabs (it was dissecting…I’m solid there, but seeing other techniques would have been nice, nonetheless) to catch a couple hours of sleep.  Even after that I was a total zombie. 

Overall yesterday was a good day – lots of talk about morphology (my favorite!) and all that jazz, so it was fun for me.  It was also nice to have a little bit of a leg up to help out some of the other people here who haven’t done dissections or gone through the morphology all that much yet.  Yay, teaching!

Collecting last night was slow, but OUTSTANDING!!

Y’all, I caught a Euchaetes!!!!!!!!!!!!  Just one, and it’s the only one I’ve seen the entire time I’ve been here (5 days already!), but it’s a Euchaetes!!  Euchaetes zella, to be exact.  It’s one of my favorite species in the genus.  It’s a little more petite than most and has the super distinctive whit darts on the forewings which are a dusty deep chocolatey-almost-black-brown (I know, I need to come up with a more solid color description…it’ll get there), and pale white-cream hindwings.  The abdomen on these critters is gorgeous – it’s a strikingly vivid orange-ish red with the tell-tale-Euchaetes black spots running down the midline and the sides of the abdomen.  Ahhh…I saw that beauty fly up to the sheet and I just about peed my pants!  It is now safely pinned and stored away in my insect box.  The only sad thing about this story is that zella is a species that I have a fair number of representatives of already, but, fresh material is always exciting and it proves, in real time, that my guys are here…it’s just a matter of finding them  :)  I stumbled across a number of other pretty little things last night as well.  So overall, the diversity was up, though the numbers were low.

We all called it a fairly early night and was thrilled to jump in bed at midnight clean and satisfied with a good night of collecting.

Today has been a pretty easy day.  We had a few lectures this morning and then went on a butterfly walk and I was lucky enough to come home with a couple beauties to add to my collection and family representation count (we’re supposed to have a minimum of 25 families in our collections by the end of the course, I’m up to about 18-20, almost there!).  More lectures took up the rest of the day and now it’s just about dinner time (yay, food!!!)  After dinner we are heading out to the desert for collecting and then might close the night at the Rodeo Bar that is near the site we are collecting at.

Here’s to another night of good collecting and finding more Euchaetes!!

Hope all is well in your realms!

‘Til next time,

~MW

Lep Course, Day 3

16 Aug 2011

Whew!  What a couple of days this has been!  The half day we had at the station on Sunday was pretty chill (and by pretty I mean extremely…) in comparison to Monday and today.  Heavens, all I want is sleep, but there simply isn’t time for that here.

We start our days bright and early.  Breakfast is at 7:30, so I’ve been getting up around 6 to look over some notes and things and mentally prepare for the bombardment of information that will accost my brain come 8am.  ***I’m going to have to start getting up earlier, though…I’ll need to start going around to the sheets and traps in the eeeearly, daaark mornings to hunt down the moths that don’t come out until later in the night.***  We have been doing a lecture or two in the mornings and then heading out for some good hours of field collecting (3-4hrs has been the norm thus far) outside of the research station grounds.  It’s been a lot of fun to drive even 20min and see an incredible difference in fauna and flora, not to mention terrain.  We eat lunch somewhere in there and then hit the lectures or field again.  Then there’s dinner and then maybe another lecture and, of course, the highlight of our day: major collecting!! 

Since the majority of Lepidoptera are nocturnal moths (though there are a number of diurnal or day-flying moths) the best collecting (unless you are hunting butterflies specifically) is at night at a light.  We use various different bulbs with white sheets set up behind them to help attract our moths…and of course anything else that sees our wondrous orbs and simply can’t stay away  ;)   There actually has been a fair bit of insect diversity which has been a lot of fun for those of us who don’t consider every order outside of Lepidoptera as “trash.”  I’ve seen a fair number of scarab beetles and tons of other beetle, ichneumonid wasps, caddisflies, mantid flies (!!), true flies, stink bugs and other hemiptera, leafhoppers and other homoptera/heteroptera, antlion adults (!!), and much, much more.  And, yes, I have most definitely snagged a few of those lovely specimens  :)  I even got a solifuge (I’ve never seen one alive – I totally let the cutie feed on a couple moths before I tossed it in some EtOH) and held a wicked awesome whip scorpion (this thing was as big as my hand – so sweet!)!!!  It’s been quite the exciting trip even outside of all of the lep awesomeness.  I’ve been able to collect a few members of my subfamily of moth, but none of my actual critters yet…it’s OK, I still have 4 more days after today to snatch some up!

We have been focusing more on caterpillars today which has been great fun – they’re such cuties.  It’s always remarkable to me how these creatures can often times go from a super showy caterpillar to a severely drab moth and vice-versa.  Not to mention the changes various caterpillars go through!  It’s like looking at a completely different animal at each instar (molt) for so many of these guys!  If any of y’all are interested in looking at some way pretty pictures of caterpillars check out Dave Wagner’s Caterpillars of Eastern North America.  It’s an incredible field guide…worth every penny.  And!  I now get to say that I have collected caterpillars with Dave Wagner (living the dream!!!)!!!  I feel super privileged to be able to say that.  He knows so much!  I’ve been blown away.

It’s been an intense day of lectures and collecting…and when I think about what else we have lined up for today I’m realizing that today (even though it’s 5:30pm here) is really just beginning.  After dinner, at 7:30, we go back to the drawing boards and embark on an all-nighter of lectures and collecting.  Meaning, we don’t even have the option of going to bed until 2am.  Yeeeeowzas!  Tomorrow is definitely going to be a loooong day, haha.  It’ll be worth it, but I’m definitely going to need to take a day or two to recover once I get back to the Tundra.  I’ve been crawling into bed between midnight and 1am the last two nights, but that extra hour of brain use pre-shower, pre-bed is going to be rough, y’all.  For knowledge!!  Haha.

Alrighty, kids, I’m off to snag a quick nap so I can study and begin processing the onslaught of info that has been the last 2.5 days before it’s rock’n’roll time again  :)

I’ll keep the updates coming as long as time and the internet allows.

Praying all is well!

Shalom,
~MW