JOYS!

Happy Sunday, lovelies.

"The LORD lives, and blessed be my rock, and exalted be the God of my salvation"

Ps. 18:46

What a beautiful promise: The LORD lives.  How awesome is that?!  That right there is enough to make any day a joyful one.

It's a wonderfully dreary, drizzly, overcast day here in the Soggy Tundra.  That's right...it's finally beginning to melt, which makes for quite a soggy time right now.  But, I love it!  Momma, it feels more and more like I'm living in a Beatrix Potter story every day - and I absolutely love it!  I don't love the 5-10min it takes me to wipe down Jakers after we come in from a stroll outside, but I can deal with that  :)  I'm really enjoying the unveiling of spring here.  It's so refreshing and beautiful.  Don't get me wrong, we still have mountains of snow all over the place, but they are beginning to melt and there are patches of green grass and green mosses all over the place right now.  And, the chickadees...they are everywhere!  I've even heard a few gaggles of geese flying overhead the last week.  SPRING IS IN THE AIR!  Glory!

OK, clearly I love this season change and could talk about it forever, so I will digress  :)

How about some joys?  Sound like a plan?  Grood  :)


Monday, 7 March 2011 - RH lectured about Hymenoptera...seriously made my day.

Tuesday, 8 March 2011 - Free lunch for the grad students!!  Hooray! for guest seminar speakers  :)

Wednesday, 9 March 2011 - Had a hilarious conversations with the Markster all via email subject lines...seriously made my day...we are that kind of nerdy up here, haha.

Thursday, 10 March 2011 - One final go 'round with the Linnaean Games team before NCB...we always have a blast at our practices...man, I'm a nerd  ;)

Friday, 11 March 2011 - Took a nap!!  And it was glorious.

Saturday, 12 March 2011 - Spring cleaning!  Dusted, swept, mopped, cleaned windows, the whole shebang...always makes me happy as a lark. And, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MARKSTER!

Sunday, 13 March 2011 - Day one of NCB!!  It was super fun to see some old, familiar faces and all the new ones filling up the conference center.  Even though we got totally served at the Linnaean Games that was still a blast, as well.

Monday, 14 March 2011 - Poster presentation? Check!  It went really well and I had a blast talking about my long lost wasps...you can think I'm crazy, it's fine  ;)

Tuesday, 15 March 2011 - UMN took home 5 awards at the awards ceremony!  Two for some 10min talks, and three for posters.  Represent!

Wednesday, 16 March 2011 - Phone date with Dr. Wharton.  He always brightens my day  :)

Thursday, 17 March 2011 - St. Paddy's Day!!!  Making meals with friends is always wonderful.

Friday, 18 March 2011 - Stroll through the woods with the pup and good friends.

Saturday, 19 March 2011 - Coffee date with Christine.  Oh how I do love my German  :)



And there you have it, lovelies.  Two weeks of joy!

What's been bringing joy to your life lately?

Be blessed in the Lord!
~MW

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

ESA-NCB

Happy Sunday, all.

Just wanted to give y'all a quick heads up before the weekend is up and the week gets rolling.

Today starts the Entomological Society of America - North Central Branch Meeting that my department has been preparing for these last few months...so...it's going to be a busy start to the week!  But a fun one, no doubt.

I'm going to try to update y'all tonight after I get home from all of the events today holds and also post my weekly joys, but if not...well, you know the drill here: I'll get to it ASAP  :)

Hope your week has been incredibly blessed.

Loving you in our Savior,
~MW

..::Midterms::..

Eesh... 

Yep, that's the general consensus 'round these parts.

This will be super short and sweet...due to the above title  =]


Here's some joys!

Sunday, 27 Feb 2011 - extremely blessed by my brothers and sisters at Christ Redeemer...amazing message, amazing worship, amazing fellowship

Monday, 28 Feb 2011 - had a really nice visit with Robin, I'm super glad we work together  :)

Tuesday, 1 Mar 2011 - had a really productive Linnaean games practice and a really good visit with SW

Wednesday, 2 Mar 2011 - had an awesome chat with RW; got a wonderful email from SW; got some good insight into methods of education (got me pumped about teaching again); wonderful small group meeting...I mean, really wonderful

Thursday, 3 Mar 2011 - had a lovely early morning visit/study session with Meg and Linnaean games practice was way good again, too

Friday, 4 Mar 2011 - another good day with SW, complete with visiting with an up an coming 8-year-old entomologist who came to visit us at the insect collection; PIG'S EYE!!

Saturday, 5 Mar 2011 - got to play "big sister" to SW's youngest - I haven't been to an 8th grade basketball tournament in ages, it was an absolute blast and they won all 3 of their games!  Way to go Zephyrs!

Sunday, 6 Mar 2011 - productive mornings always make me happy; got to Skype with the boyfriend and close out the day with amazing Jesus time and some time with the fam via tele; and heard from an old friend in TX!  It was a day full of joys  =)


Oh, I forgot to mention this last week, but for those of y'all who missed this on facebook, some of my artwork and some from my classmates from last semester made it "big" in the blog world!  Check it out: Frenatae Calendar

And, with that, I am outty.

Love y'all!
~MW