Sunday Stills

Rice krispy treats!

Dish'o'bee flies

Fountain I saw when I went exploring

A juvenile leaf hopper

The cute porcupine fish 

Alligator skull and bones

Third Saturday

My legs are tired!  Today I walked around the North/Main campus of NCSU.  I'm glad I wore my nature shoes and not my sandals.  I went to the campus today because I wanted to find a professor there that my advisor worked with.  I came close, I found the building his office is in.  I actually want to talk to him, because we appear to have similar research interests.  Whether or not I'll be courageous enough to say words if I ever meet him is another story.  After finding the building, I went to the library.  And shoot, it is midnight.  I had started this earlier and forgot about it.  Whatever, I'll go on.  I have mixed feelings about the NCSU campus.  The campus is gorgeous, a lot of green space, flowers, places to sit, some art pieces, all the buildings look new or very well maintained.  But, it feels isolated.  My school is right in the city of Scranton.  There are non-campus buildings and people every where.  It does feel like you're on a campus, but it also feels like you're in a city at the same time.  It is a nice feeling that you can go to places other than the campus.  NCSU's campus is not like that.  They're not in the city of Raleigh itself, but just outside it.  Sure, there are local businesses and such, but really where it is all campus.  I don't think I'd like it that much, I don't like to feel like I'm "trapped" on campus.  At the same time though, I kind of wish I got accepted.  They have so many science buildings their, I would die of happiness.  Seeing all the science buildings made me wonder if I made a good choice with Scranton, but ultimately I think I did.  I will definitely be checking out State for grad school though, one of their libraries has an ice cream store in it!  And blablabla faculty with my interests, things that matter, etc.

Day Nineteen

So so so.  I actually paid attention to the clock to allow myself adequate time to write this post.  Except I don't really have anything to say.  Work is normal, I finished my bag from South America, and got them sorted.  I answered some questions and I looked at the downstairs fish.  Since today was fly-day, I decided to leave a little earlier since I finished what I was working on.  Uh...what else...I finished my book, it was on bird reproduction/parenting/parasitism/courtship.  I enjoyed it a lot and it makes me want to study all that jazz with birds even more.  That's all I really have to say, hopefully I will go out and do things this weekend (weather permitting) and will be able to write about them.

Day Eighteen

I did not realize the time! Ten minutes until midnight...crap!  I am playing Minecraft and I got caught up with it.  I'm in creative mode and I'm building an island.  On the top is a cozy looking, simple, cottage/farm kind of deal.  Below in the water is going to be a crazy extravagant home.  I just spent the last ten minutes trying to get one of my sheep to come back and building a fence so they don't kill themselves in the volcano.  Today was good, I did my usual stuff.  A penguin fossil expert came in and I asked about medullary bone.  It was great.  I will try to do a better post tomorrow.  Sorry!

Day Seventeen

Please enjoy this video of genetically modified zebra fish.  I'm too tired to write a post, but I can assure you my day was great.

Day Sixteen

Today I continued South America and I should finish the vial I'm on tomorrow!  The bee flies aren't terribly different but I don't like the guide needed to key them out.  The writer(s) use different names for things from they key I've been using, and not all the names they use to describe the flies are common (ex. they call the alula the squama [I think that's what they're referring to, 90% sure]). I am slowly getting the hang of it, I'm depending more on the descriptions of the genus/species than the key if I can narrow my options down.  I also have been sorting through bee flies that have already been identified for the collection.  There is a lot, the box that has the apolysis is ridiculously full, and I'm considering a second box to put them in.  There are also more geminaria added, they're probably my favorite genus.  They have a very unique eye and black markings on the area between the thorax and the abdomen, and they're pretty looking.  I also like the bombylius genus too, but mostly because they are fluffy.  In other news, I'm going to start looking up topics I can do talks on. I think I might do mimicry in insects or the significance of pollinating insects or the cycle of life in bee flies (if I can find enough info).  I'm kind of leaning towards mimicry, I find it fascinating.  In other news, I made a full meal tonight, and by that I mean vegetable, starch, and protein!  Steak in a bag, cous cous, and steamed spinach.  I over cooked the steak a little I think, I'm not too experienced in cooking steaks and I like my meat on the rarer side, but not rare enough where I get food poisoning and I don't know what to look for so I guess over is better than under.  Steak in a bag is pretty easy to make, since it cooks in a bag in the oven, and it is great on sandwiches too,  #Mealz4Dayz.  Well, that's all I have to say, I'm going to try to make rice krispy treats (hopefully they won't come out too bad).

Day Fifteen

Two weeks already! How the time flies.  Today pretty much went like every other day.  X and I started going through the bee flies we identified and putting them together by tribe.  We also looked at this one bee fly for an hour, because neither of us could make a definite call on what it was.  It looked like a combination of two species, but since that is highly unlikely, we just listened to The Doc's call on it.  I started looking at some bee flies from South America, but I stopped because I had to catch my bus/the key was using weird words.  Hopefully tomorrow I can get my own copy of they key, I used X's after he left.  I also may be going to Atlanta in July if I can get time off, although even if I can go, it is still up in the air because there isn't really any cheap forms of transportation to get me there.  I have mixed feelings about going to Atlanta, on one hand I'll be helping my parents and getting paid, on the other hand I'd rather be interning.  I guess I'll have to wait and see.

Second Sunday Salacity

Because I had to go for an alliteration (salacity is a synonym for wish/desire).

Sunday marks my third week here, hard to believe it.  Apart from my second Friday, I've been enjoying myself.  There is one thing I want though, my friends.  I was talking to an acquaintance who has done summer internships before, and I asked him about making friends.  He said don't expect to.  I'm fine with not having friends here, I don't mind being on my own, and 98% of the time I'm happy by myself.  The other 2% is broken down into 1% I don't have anyone to have a weird/inappropriate/inside joke conversations with when the mood strikes (sure there is texting or facebook messaging or phone calls, but nothing beats face to face) and the other 1% is because I need motivation to leave my room, and friends are generally good at making me do fun things (that are legal).  I will have to motivate myself to do things, instead of sitting in my room.  I'll try to plan some things out, there is nothing to do around my apartment, so it looks like I should figure out what I can do in the city.  Hopefully next weekend I will have some adventures to write about.

Second Saturday

Why I like birds 

Let me start this tale with how I got into birds...

When I was younger I didn't really care too much about birds.  I was all about the mammals, especially the carnivores.  I wanted to be a zoo keeper when I was younger but then I didn't.  All I knew was I wanted to do something with mammals.  It wasn't until I got into high school that I even thought seriously about birds. My AP bio teacher was an avid bird watcher, and would talk about it sometimes.  I wanted to impress my teacher, so I decided to take up bird watching.  Turns out I actually liked bird watching a lot, so I stuck with it.  And my interest grew from there.

Now onto why I like birds...

I am reasonably sure that I want to study animal courtship/mating in the future.  I find mating rituals and behaviors fascinating, along with genital form/function and honest signals.  I also think sexual selection and evolution caused by sexual selection the bees knees.  There is no better animal (in my opinion) where all these things I love can be seen, then birds.  Some birds grow elaborate feathers to impress a mate, others mimic any sound to woo, others build, and some dance and sing.  Male birds go to many lengths to impress females, even feeding them to show that they will be good providers for future offspring.   Birds can also be very promiscuous or monogamous or some sort of combination which is fascinating.  Some females are able to select sperm from a specific male they copulated with to fertilize her eggs.   Their nests are interesting too, they can be as simple as a dent in the sound or as complicated as an giant woven apartment shared by many birds.  I don't think I could find a mammal that goes to the lengths that birds do to attract a mate.  I will add more details to this later as there are more and I'd like to get into more specifics.  But I'm lazy and looking at videos of street food vendors.  

Day Twelve

I don't feel like talking about my day.  It did not start out well and although it did get better, I'd rather not reflect on it.  And now I have to go deal with a stupid housing thing, which is the last thing I want to do right now.  I promise a better post for tomorrow.

Please enjoy this vine that I found instead http://vinescope.com/the-life-of-a-raccoon-117.html

Day Eleven

So The Doc wasn't in today, and neither X nor I knew that she wasn't.  I didn't have anything to do really, because I finished the bee flies from the USA yesterday, and was going to ask her what I should do next.  I decided to go through a vial of flies that The Doc told me not to worry about, because based on the size of the flies, would be two different flies.  I decided to do it, for practice.  Just by looking at the vial, I also thought the flies would be apolysis and mythicomyids based on size alone.  Imagine my surprise when there were no bee flies!  Even with my almost two weeks of experience, I knew none of the flies I was looking at were bee flies.  Since I didn't have anything to do, I tried to key out the flies.  Never again unless The Doc is there.  I only managed to identify one fly completely on accident.  I was skimming through the dichotomous key book, when I saw a picture of a fly that looked like one floating in my pteri dish.  Sure enough, it was.  As for the other ones...no amount of google searches yielded results.  On a more interesting note, this man who works for the museum came in to the lab.  He had a bug and didn't know what it was, and asked us to identify it.  I thought it was a leafhopper, but I could not find a picture of one that looked like it.  Then X found picture of nymph leafhoppers that looked just like the man's mystery bug!  We both agreed that it probably was a one, and X emailed him with our thoughts.  And that was my day.  Hopefully The Doc is back tomorrow so I can have something new to do.

Day Ten

So I did field work today.  I have to say I like catching birds better, but I'm glad I got the experience.  To catch flies (what we were interested in) you wave a net around over grassy, bushy, poopy, sappy, leafy, areas.  Then you twist the net so the flies can't escape and try to get them all to the bottom of the net.  Now it gets really interesting, because the mouth aspirator comes into play.  The aspirator is simply a vacuum but you provide the suction.  You suck in one end, and with the other end vacuum the bugs up.  It is trickier than it sounds, because the bugs don't always want to be sucked up.  And spiders also are by catch (and I am not a huge spider fan after seeing the affects of their venom on someone close to me [my Grandpa was bitten on the leg by a spider and it was a nasty looking wound, he is fine now]).  I did take a cool picture of a spider carrying her egg sac though.

I also caught a bee fly!  I think it was from bombyliinae, specifically a bombylius, but I'm not to sure and neither was Q, X, and Jr. Doc (The Doc's grad student).  I don't think we caught any of the flies that Jr. Doc needed, but at least we tried.  Also Jr. Doc told my that chiggers only bite when they're juveniles, and their bites itch so much because they spit a chemical on the skin the changes its shape so it better accommodates their proboscis to drink our blood, and the fact that the skin changed its shape makes it itch!  How cool is that!? That's it for now, I am probably going to fold some laundry and go to bed.  

Day Nine

Same old same old at internship.  I identified a bunch of flies, I just have three more vials to go before I'm done with the USA flies.  I am definitely improving, Q confirmed one fly for me and pointed me in the right direction for another. Tomorrow we're allegedly going somewhere for fieldwork, but I'm not too sure anymore.  It is raining right now, so I don't know if we'll be able to go tomorrow.  In other intern news, I may be giving a talk at the Daily Planet (the globe sculpture/theater I've mentioned before).  I don't know what I'll do it on, I would like to do bee fly reproduction or maybe parasitism, but I'm also kind of interested in the role flies play in the environment, and if flies could fill the role as bees as pollinators if bees go extinct.  I'll figure something out, and I'll talk to The Doc about it.  That's all I have to say for now.  There will be more to write about tomorrow, even if there isn't fieldwork because adventures in cooking real food!

Day Eight

So I've been here for eight days already.  A week and a day. Wow.  Interning today went well, I knew what I was doing for the most part, and I had trouble on three.  One of the three was from a genus where there were only five species, and it is not something there is seen a lot, there isn't even one in our collection!  Since nothing earth shattering happened at internship, I'll talk about other things that happened today.

So I kind of made a friend today, Bus Friend.  Bus Friend is a senior at a very good university, and is an environmental science major.  I know where she went while she was abroad, what she does at her job, her experience in choir, what she's doing in her free time, and her home town.  I know all these things about, but there is one thing I don't know...her name.  We started talking one day at the bus stop after I got off the phone with my mom, I was talking about science classes and since she was also a science major...we talked.  She seems really nice, and friendly.  But I never introduced myself, and she never introduced herself, but yet we talked her whole bus ride (she gets off the stop before me).  I'll try to introduce myself tomorrow or hopefully she does to me.  Either way, I liked talking to her and I hope it'll continue.

Another issue I have relating to names is with The Doc.  Everyone calls The Doc by her first name; X, Q, her boss, she even introduced herself to a mammal intern by her first name.  So it should be a no brainer how to address her, right?  Wrong! I don't feel comfortable calling her by her first name.  This is because I don't feel like I have the right to.  She has a PhD, she has worked hard for that title and gained a vast amount of knowledge in her field. I feel like even if she told me to call her by her first name, or even my adivsor told me to (and believe me, I call my adivsor all kinds of thing behind his back [cute/funny nicknames, nothing bad, I LOVE my advisor, he is da bomb]).  I don't want to call her by her first name, but I feel awkward being the only person not calling her by the first name.  It is something I'll have to figure out on my own.

And that is  it for Day Eight! Stay tuned for Day Nine.

Sunday Stills One

Since I didn't bother writing anything down about the exhibits like I planned and I am too lazy to look things up, I am just going to post some pictures I took with captions.

Baby beaver 

Wolverine 

Hummingbird study skin 

Beaver and dam 

Snapping turtle 

Dinosaur 

Butterfly eating 

Owl butterfly 

Blue morpho butterfly 

North Carolina habitats view from above 

Emerald tree boas 

First Saturday

So I do not go into the city like I planned.  I hung around in my room all day, and watched youtube videos.  I ate cold (gross) mac and cheese for lunch because I didn't feel like reheating it, but I did make pancakes for dinner.   I used a new to me mix, I think it is Hungry Man (or something like that) and I didn't have high hopes for it because it was a just add water mix (as opposed to Bisquik which you need eggs and milk for).  The pancakes weren't as thick as Bisquik, nor did I find them as tasty as Bisquik pancakes, but they were good.  I think I'll use the weekend to either post about Raleigh or ramble about things I find interesting.  Since I didn't go into the city today, I'll ramble.

My apartmentmate and I were talking about Disney movies the other day, and their flaws/issues, and we talked about The Lion King.  Let me first say, TLK is my favorite Disney movie.  Despite it having a special place in my heart, the animal inaccuracies drive me insane.  There are many directions I could take this, but I will be focusing on the main species of the movie, lions.  Before I get into the meat of things, let me first say I will pulling some information I don't know/not sure of from Wikipedia.  I know Wikipedia isn't the greatest source for facts,  people can go in and edit the articles, not every article is complete, blablabla.  But here's the thing, this is not a scholarly article or a paper I'll be turning in for a grade.  I don't feel like looking up scholarly articles and reading them for something as casual as a blog post that I'm writing this late at night.  So with that let me begin.  I'll be using a list format.

• Let me tackle the whole Simba is next in line to be king first.  Bull dinkies.  Young male lions are driven out of the pride by their fathers around 2 or 3.  Typical male lions do not want their sons to compete with them as pride leaders.  It would also be pointless for Simba to become "king" too.  Since prides are usually made up of related females, Simba would have to have sex with his relatives, which brings me up to my next point...
• The implied incest.  As mentioned before, prides are typically  made of related females.  That means all the cubs are some kind of cousins to begin with, and if they have the same father then they're half sibling cousins.  Since Mufasa is the dominant male, he has breeding rights.  So if Mufasa is the father of Simba and Nala, then they're half sibling cousins (drop the cousin part if Sarabi and Nala's mom [who has a name] aren't related).  But then there is Scar, who has a small chance of fathering cubs (when two brothers share a pride, one is usually more dominant than the other, and the more dominant one has breeding rights, but the less dominant one could probably get it in too).  If Scar is the father of Nala, then her and Simba are some kind of cousins (I think).  There is also a small chance that Nala's mom did it with a nomadic male, and had Nala.  If her and Sarabi are related, then Simba and Nala are cousins, but if they aren't then no incest.  The chance of this last option is low, so in the end Simba would be screwing his cousin sister. 
• It is also weird that Simba and Nala seem to be the only cubs.  Usually there are many cubs in a pride of varying ages.  Lions cubs do have a high mortality rate, but still, lack of other cubs is fishy.  I was going to comment on the litter size of Sarabi and Nala's mom, but I'm not so sure.  Female lions can have up to six cubs, but one to four is the average.  I would think that with conditions as good as they appear in the Pridelands, they would have a large litter than one because there is enough food to support many cubs.  There could be some fertility issues with Mufasa or his ladies.  Or maybe some cannibalism?  Some animals eat their young if there is something wrong with them so maybe Sarabi and Nala's mom ate Simba and Nala's siblings because there was something wrong with them and the lionesses wanted to recoup some energy they spent for carrying them and giving birth.  
• I don't like how any of the lions are colored.  They're too blonde/yellow/gold/orange in some cases.  The eyes aren't always right either.  Lions only have the light colored eyes as cubs, as adults they're amber colored. Also let me go onto mane colors.  Lions don't have red manes.  They may have a reddish tint, but they're varying shades of blonde and dark brown.  Also technically, the lionesses should prefer Scar over Mufasa.  It has been proven that females lions prefer male with a dark mane because it is a sign of higher testosterone levels.  Also Nala and Simba as cubs are missing the distinctive spotting that lions show as cubs.  
• Scar should not have a relationship with the hyenas.  Lions and hyenas are enemies, and will kill each other and their offspring.  It just doesn't make sense.
• Simba's exile!  I don't understand how Simba survived in the desert.  Simba is not old enough to hunt yet, and is very vulnerable to predation.  He should have died of starvation and/or dehydration well before he was found.  I also don't understand how Simba survived on bugs when he was raised by Timon and Pumba.  I don't know how much a cub eats, but full grown male lions needs at least 15 pounds of meat per day.  Bugs can have a lot of protein, some even have 28 grams.  But that means Simba would have to eat about 243 bugs that have at least 28 grams a protein a day in order to meet the minimum requirements.  That seems highly unlikely, especially since lions are not adapted to hunt insects.  
• Side note, how big is the desert that Simba and Nala ended up crossing?  
• I wish I knew how old Simba and Nala are.  Lions only live 10-14 years, and probably less for males since they fight other males and patrol their territory frequently, so they have more wear and tear.  I'm kind of surprised the Simba isn't dead by the end of the second movie.  I did some math (or at least tried to) and I figured Simba should be about 11 at the end of the second movie, if he was five when Nala found him.  I have a feeling he is actually older but whatever.  
• I should have done this point earlier, but the whole Simba and Nala are "betrothed" is bull dinkies.  Males breed all females in a pride, not just one.  This maximizes his chances of having his genes spread on for generations to come and increases his fitness. Simba should be screwing every female in the pride, but oh wait, he's probably related and that would be incest and could result in some genetically defective cubs.  
• I don't know of this is a flaw, but it is something that is confusing me.  I don't understand how old Kovu and Kiara are.  The only way I can figure it is if Nala was in estrous the night she and Simba had that romantic montage, and Zira was in estrous back at Priderock.  Here's the thing, (I haven't seen the TLK2 in a long time) but I'm pretty sure that Kovu isn't Scar's son or is adopted.  I don't know how Kovu could have been conceived.  Kovu and Kiara look around the same age when they first meet.  I think there would be an obvious between Kovu and Kiara if they were different ages. It is just too weird to figure out in my head.
• I don't know where Zira and her girls came from.  That is never made clear.  I don't think prides are accepting of new females, so I don't know how they joined. 
• I don't understand the variety of habitats seen in TLK/TLK2.  I get the savannah.  I get the lush paradise in the middle of the desert (there's one desert in Africa that has a river in it, and around that river is a tropical forest).  I don't get Zira's territory.  Termites are found in areas that has have plants and what not for them to eat, not in the boondocks.  I don't think they make mound that big, and if they do they would not be cavernous underneath.  How the habits all are close to each other is beyond me.  
• I'm not going to go into the whole Simba is the king of everything, the herbivores care what he thinks, etc.  It is utter bull dinkies and  we all know it.  
• I also didn't really talk about TLK2 too much.  It was some similar flaws, and a few new ones, but I honestly don't care for TLK2 too much, so I'm not going to add its problems to here, other than the ones I listed.  
• I keep on thinking of things to add to the list.  So this has to do with cubs, and I probably should put it with the other cub stuff.  So when lionesses give birth to cubs, they do it away from the pride, in a secluded area, and wait to introduce the cubs to the pride.  This does not appear to happen in the TLK.  Also, the male lion interactions with cubs isn't right.  A male lion cares about his cubs, and will play around with them, but not to the extent portrayed in the movie.  He wants them alive because they continue his lineage, not because he loves them.  

These are all the things I can think of off the top of my head.  I wish there was another TLK movie to show what it was like under Scar, where Zira came from, when all the new lions seen in TLK2 are born, etc.  But, that probably won't happen so we'll be left wondering.  

Day Five

Day Five! The Doc came back from her workshop so she was in the lab today.  She helped me with my questions, because X wasn't there today.  I did the same thing today as I did during days one through four.  The Doc did show me the difference between the head types though, which made my life easier.  I did take another trip on the struggle bus, but it wasn't as bad as yesterday.  Nothing else really happened worth mentioning.  Except for lunch.  I went down to the cafe and ordered a bison burger (side note, the burger was super tasty, I love bison meat), the cashier commented on my shirt.  You see, I decided to casual Friday, so I wore my "you obviously like owls" shirt.  The shirt is designed by Jeph Jacques, author of Questionable Content, a webcomic that is pretty awesome.  She knew the shirt was from QC, asked if I read it, and I said yes  It was nice that someone recognized the shirt, she is the only person beside my friend who bought it for me has ever commented on it.  I also watched The Doc give a talk about the importance of flies.  I might have mentioned this before but the NRC has a dual use statue, on the outside of the building it looks like a globe, but on the inside it is hollow and has a stage and projectors and what not so scientists can give talks.  I really like how the museum gives talks to teach the public about science.  I may give my doing a talk at the end of the summer, but I don't know yet.  So, my first week as an intern is over.  I like what I'm doing and everyone is nice.  I'm excited to continue, and hopefully I can do more than just identify species (ex. fieldwork).  Tomorrow I'm going to try to go to the museum and take pictures so I can write about it in more detail here.

Day Four

Day Four got off to a bad start.  I slept through alarms, so I woke up later than I wanted to and had to rush to get ready.  But I did make it to the bus stop early and made it to the museum on time.  I thought I wouldn't have to worry about buses until I had to take the one back to my apartment.  I was wrong.  I was hit by.......

THE STRUGGLE BUS (bum-bum-buuuuuuuummmmmmmmm)

I was having the darndest time identifying bee flies!  Nothing was making sense, and X had to help me more times than not. I was so frustrated with myself for not doing better.  "Why can't I do this," I wondered, "why do I suck at this so much, I must look like a total idiot".  I had to remind myself several times that I am new.  I've never worked with bee flies or insects in general, I have only used dichotomous keys once or twice before, and they (hopefully) aren't expecting a lot from me at this point.  I am not an expert bee fly identifier they hired who should be able to do it no problem.  I am a bird lady who wanted to try something new.  Sometimes I feel like I hold myself to a much higher standard than necessary, good in someways, but also annoying the heck out of me when I can't reach the goals that  I set.

Eventually, I overcame the struggle bus and identified some flies on my own.  My favorite part about today was an email I may or may not should have intentionally gotten.  My boss/advisor has been at a conference most of this week, so she sent X and I an email apologizing to me, and asking X if he had been helping.  Whether X meant to or not, he replied all and said I was catching on quickly.  I almost wanted to thank him for the compliment.  It really meant a lot to me coming from him, since he is a pro at identifying bee flies and I'm...not.  But I didn't, I thought it would be creepy referencing an email that may or may not have been for me.

I did end up on the struggle bus again, but it was right before I was leaving.  I just made sure my flies were in enough ethanol and left.  The bus ride to my apartment was a little scary.  It was sunny and slighty cloudy and then all of the sudden DARK AND OMINOUS.  I have a picture on my iTouch of the difference between the storm clouds we were under and the sky in the distance, which I will try to post later.  The wind had picked up and was blowing everything around.  And right before the bus reached my apartment, then rain started.  It wasn't as bad as I thought, but I still ran to my building anyway.  I had a very nice conversation with my apartment-mate while we ate dinner about the flaws and messages of Disney movies.  It was AWESOME.  Maybe I'll post about them another time, right now I need to go iron my clothes.

Day Three

Another short post!  I didn't realize the time, I was using my new water colors, and once again I need to head to bed at a decent hour.  Day Three was great!  I made it to the bus on time, was able to stop at the corner before the museum, and I read a little before I was able to go inside the NRC.  I identified more bee flies, with the help of X.  X is very helpful and I'm grateful that he'll spend some time going over the key with me and showing me some fly anatomy I still haven't figured out. I talked to some kids today who were looking at me work.  I'm used to having people stare at me in lab while I'm working (my lab at school also has glass walls).  What I'm not used to is having people interested in what I'm doing.  I explained what I was doing, told them a little bit about bee flies, and then I went back inside.  I love what I'm doing, but I wish I had time to go and explore the NRC/museum more.  I will definitely go this weekend to take pictures and maybe draw some animals to paint.  Hopefully the butterfly room on the fourth floor will be open, because there's also a sloth in there (apparently).  There's also a dinosaur in motion exhibit which I will definitely try to buy a ticket for.  I love dinosaurs, even though I was terrified of them for awhile (I'm looking at you Jurassic Park books). Enough rambling about my desire of exploration and dinosaurs and sloths, I need to shower and get to bed.  And as a parting note, I made the bus back to my apartment today!  Gold star for me.

Day Two

Day Two is going to be kept shorter than Day One, because I really need to sleep early.  I have a history of sleeping through alarms, and I almost did this morning and yesterday.  I am a heavy sleeper to begin with, and coupled with only four-ish hours of sleep is making not want to wake up to my alarms.

Day Two went well.  I woke up (later than I wanted but I was too comfortable in my bed), got lost on the way to the bus stop X told me about, but I made it anyway early (yay missing things/ arriving on time paranoia).  The bus wasn't bad, except that it did not have the pull stop request rope, it had these buttons that didn't realize requested a stop.  The bus stopped at the street I had to get off at and I just asked the driver to let me off.  Got to the NRC on time, the lab was locked so I hung out on the couches outside it.  The other intern, Q, got there about five minutes after me.  After sitting on the couch for two minutes, he went and found someone to unlock the lab.  We went in, he set me up with a microscope, and I practiced using the dichotomous key with known/labeled bee flies.  It is much harder than I expected, and Q and X told me it was difficult to use at first.    Eventually, I decided to move on to the unknowns.  Q basically gave me the right species for my first one, gave me a hint for the second on, and the third one was the worst.  It was missing both of its antennae.  One may not think it would be a problem, but actually the antennae are important to identifying the different flies.  The anthrax flies all have tufted hairs at the end of the antennae.  The other bee fly groups/tribes/genuses  do not.  I am convinced the mystery fly is some kind of anthrax, but there is no species in the collection that I kind find that match.  Q told me I had to use a complicated key that he and X spent a long time following the other day, and I should save it for tomorrow.  It was my first day of doing actual work, and I enjoyed it.  I love species identification and I the hunt for the unknown (aka internet creeping, and a lot of it).

At the end of Day Two, instead of taking the bus to my apartment to eat something, I had dinner with my father.  He was driving back through North Carolina, and picked me up from the museum.  Even though I had seen him Sunday, it was nice seeing him again.  One day I'll learn how to take the bus back to my apartment.  And that day will probably be tomorrow.

Day One

Before I complain about the bus, let me first tell you how my first day was.

AWESOME.

The NRC is GORGEOUS.  The building is brand new (only open a year) and has three floors for visitors.  Each floor is as nice as the next.  The ground floor has a right whale skeleton but she was pregnant so they have her baby's skeleton positioned in her.  They also have this earth that is visible from the outside of the NRC.  You would think it is a statue but actually inside is a lecture room, with balconies that reach out on the second and third floor.  There are also a couple of displays (not sure if the the word I want to use) that have living organisms.  The cool thing is that they don't even need to bring them to a vet, because they have vets on staff and a room where people can watch the vets take care of the animals.  The NRC also has labs that anyone can go into and do experiments or look at things under microscopes.  I think they're doing a great job with involving the public in science and inspiring a future generation of scientists.  Across from my lab is a specimen room, full of preserved insects, mammals, birds, and other organisms.  I am so jealous of their bird collection.  The study specimen birds are impeccable.  I wish my birds came out that good (I stuff birds, I don't remember if I wrote that in my first post).  The room also has this really cool table computer mammal identifier (they probably have a name for it, but I don't know it).  Basically, there are these innocuous looking tables that are sectioned off into a big blank section, a rectangular section under it where you put the specimen, and a rectangular section to the side to put the specimen when you're done.  Let's say you took the grey fox pelt.  You put it on the place specimen here section, and then BOOM, there is a projection in the blank section of the species.  Off to the side is a keypad projection that you tap to scroll through information.  There is more to the NRC but I'm going to move on to the actually museum now.

The actual museum is AMAZEBALLS.  Once again, there is a mix of biotic and abiotic specimens throughout the four floors of the museum.  I'm so glad I was told to wander the museum.  I enjoyed seeing all the stuffed specimens, which looked incredibly life like in their poses.  I especially liked an exhibit on the environments in North Carolina.  I passed by it a couple times on the floor it was on and the floor above.  My favorite thing about it was I saw something new every time.

Continuation....

(Still my first day) The museum had a very nice dinosaur exhibit, small but pretty informative.  I saw a pterosaur and I was pleased to see I the elongated finger and remember the purpose it serves(because I learned a little about them in vertebrate biology)  I also enjoyed the Arthropod Zoo too.  That is on the fourth floor of the museum.  Although I could not go into the butterfly room (it was closed), I still had a great time looking at the other arthropods.  My favorite organism was a Madagascar hissing cockroach, only because I was able to see it molt its exoskeleton.  That was really cool, I went away and came back to its tank a couple times.  It was creepy seeing the roach pale and soft looking, as opposed to brown and hard looking, but awesome at the same time.  There was also a one clawed lobster who was a cutie.  One day (hopefully this weekend) I will go the museum/NRC and take some nice pictures and write descriptions for more posts.  After I finished marveling at the museum I want back to the lab.  For the rest of the day I read up on bee flies except when I got lunch with the other two interns.  They're both very nice guys and are willing to help me out since they're more experienced.  It was a good day, until I had to take the bus back.

Let me first say, I have no experience with taking shuttle buses to move around on campus, limited experience with taking school sanctioned buses to locations off campus, and no experience with actual public transport buses.  After spending an hour making a bus schedule to bring with me the night before my internship, I made it to the bus stop to take me to downtown Raleigh.  The bus going there was no problem, I paid with quarters and sat in my seat wondering if it had set stops or only request a stops.  Luckily I didn't have to request a stop, as someone did at the street I needed to get off at.  The problem was the bus going back to my apartment.  I was going to take the same bus, but I had to get it early because I would have to then walk to a shuttle bus stop to take the shuttle to my apartment, and the shuttle stopped at a certain time and I didn't actually know where the stop was, I just had the building it should be by circled on a map.  One of the other interns, X, had taken the bus before he got his car and told me where a more direct bus was, and when I should get it.  I got lost on my way to the stop, since I am directionally challenged when it comes to map navigation.  I missed that bus.  Luckily, X was headed in the same direction as my apartment and offered me a ride, which I gladly accepted.  I also learned the bus trip planner website I used isn't really that good, since the route I originally wanted to take yesterday did not come up when I texted the bus company with the station number.  Whatevs.  I know the bus I need to take now and hopefully I can actually make the return trip.

Besides buses, Day One was great!  I'm going to give Day Two its own post, so this one won't be incredibly long.

Introductions

My name is Natalia, I'm 19 and from New York.  I'm a junior at the University of Scranton.  I am biology major on a research track.  At school my research is birds, specifically the Common Yellowthroat.  I'm interested to see if the bird's health is reflected in the reflectance from its feathers.  The Common Yellowthroat's color is from excess carotenoid pigments, which are first used as antioxidants in the immune system.  After the reflectance data is processed, I will be looking at blood smears from each bird whose feather I collected data from.  I will be looking at the white cell and blood parasite counts as a further indicator of health.  Then I will try to find correlations between reflectance, white blood cell count, and blood parasite count.  This semester I will either learn how to differentiate white blood cells or learn how to use the microscope for blood parasite counts. 

This blog is not about my bird research (yet*).  This blog is about my internship at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.  The internship starts tomorrow and goes until August 10th.  I don't really know what to expect from it.  I'm not researching birds at this internship.  I'm researching beeflies, a group of insects which I don't know anything about.  I'm in a state that I'm sort of familiar with, a city I've never been to, using a bus system for the first time researching a bug I don't know anything about at a place I haven't been to before, and I have to keep myself alive for two months.  What have I gotten myself into?  I honestly have no idea.  It will be an experience, good or bad, time will tell.  I will try to write again tomorrow to about my first day at my internship.  

*I'm hoping to win a fellowship so I can do more bird research next summer at Scranton.