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.