Day Fifty-one

Currently I'm drawing a fly.  And it looks great.  The wing veination is being annoying.  Today was more of the same.  Q emailed his latin teacher to help us with something.  And I must go back to drawing.

Day Fifty

So it looks like I've been at my internship for fifty days.  I can't believe how fast fifty days have flown by.  And every time I think of my dad coming to move me out this weekend, and then leaving next weekend I make a pout-y face.  Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii don't want to leave.  I don't want to go home and work a freelance job that I hate and tell my friends about what I have done and have them not appreciate it as much I do (don't get me wrong, they'll be happy that I did it and got the experience, but they'll never know how much it meant to me, they aren't science-y) and tell my family who won't understand (none of them are science people).  I can't wait to hang out with my friends, but at the same time I really love working in the lab.  Today was good, X and I worked on the paper.  It really is coming along well, if we pay for it to be open access on the website we're publishing it on, I'll throw the link up on the blog.  I'll miss X a lot, we get along really well and he's fun to talk to. I'll miss The Doc too, she is incredibly nice and helpful, plus she's always encouraging us to work hard and do what we think is best for the paper.  I'll miss Q a little bit, he was gone for awhile so we aren't that close but if I ever had a what insect is the question, he was great at answering them.  I'll also miss C, we didn't really start talking until later in my time here, but she's sassy and knows a lot about spiders which is really cool.  I'll  miss The Doc's Boss, he's a really crazy guy (competed in a unicycle trial last week) and he's helpful and fun to talk to about things.  I'll even miss The Doc's Boss's Assistant, we don't really talk too much, but she's always polite/cordial to me, plus she is interested in loons, which is really cool.  I just listed all the people I'm in contact with.  I guess I'll be missing everyone.  Hopefully I won't tear up or anything on my last day (next Friday).

Sunday Stills

Makin it rain sloths

Another Saturday

Siiiiiiiiigh next Saturday I move out.  And the Saturday after that I go back home.  SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGH.  I wish I could stay here longer, but that's not gonna happen.  As I said before there will be a huge post of feelz and all that jazz.  Today I saw the dinosaurs and motion exhibit at the museum and it was awesome.  The dinosaurs are made of metal and you get to interact with them.  Seriously giant metal dinosaur puppets.  And some of them roar.  Seriously so awesome.  I wish I could have taken pictures but that was not allowed.  I also went to the history museum.  It was okay, science museum is tons better.  Tomorrow I think I'm going to go to work and sort through the insects X and collected in the stairwells.  I want to spend time in the lab before I leave.  :'(

Day Forty-seven (late)

Sorry for the late post, my apartment mate and I were talking.  Today was good, I toured the capital of Raleigh, went on a secret field trip, and looked at fly genitals.  Now I'm really tired and I'm gonna go to bed.

Day Forty-six

Next Saturday I move out, and the Saturday after that I leave Raleigh.  I am so incredibly bummed.  I will post a better reflection/feelzy post when I leave, so I'll save the details for then. I just love it here so much and I've met so many great people and I feel like the work I'm doing now is so important.  I don't want to go back home and work at a job that has nothing to do with my interests.  Siiiiiiiiiiigh.  I also don't know how I'm going to go back and do my research at school either.  The flies have really grown on me.  But I'm sure I'll get back into the bird groove.  Any way, I have to finish up a presentation. Tata.

Day Forty-five

Today was great but I am watching Breaking Dawn to see how horrible-er it is instead of writing a post.

Day Forty-Four

Currently talking on the phone with my sister.  She is doing a program at Stony Brook where she learns about medical related things and what not.  Our career goals are so different.  She is so noble in what she wants to do in the future, which is bio-medical engineering  to study the kidney and heart, and making herbicides.  And maybe bone marrow research.  So noble. So helping the society and money making.  Meanwhile I want to study things that will probably benefit a small group of people and animals if I want to do conversation.  She knows what she wants to do after college (2 years masters, 5 years working, then PhD).  I don't know if I need to get a masters or if I can go straight into PhD or if I should take time off to work and pay off loans then higher education.  She may have her life planned out but I'm better at not procrastinating. BWHAHA.

X and I also were very productive today.  I saw a talk about fish in the Mekong River.  It was a good day.

Day Forty-Three

So my friend and I saw a drag show in March, the day before Easter.  We were both over the moon because 1) Most drag shows are held at venues were you had to be 21+, and we're both 19  2) We each had a favorite queen that was to be performing and 3) We both were going together.  It was amazing, the queens were all stunning, talented, beautiful, awesome, etc.  We got into the city okay, we ate food that was good, and found the venue.  I even hailed a taxi for the first time (because I made my friend ask if there was assigned seating).  The only hitch was we didn't know to transfer trains on the way back home, but my dad picked us up from the station we ended up at.  The reason I'm bringing this up if because I'm watching the show again on youtube.  Me and my friend were pretty far from the stage (far enough where we couldn't really see facial expressions).  I wish we were close to the stage in the standing room place.  The queens are even better close up.  I'm glad people filmed it so I can enjoy it over and over again.

Today was a good day. X and I worked on the paper we're co-authoring and we think we could get the first draft done by the end of the week.  Then we finished collecting in the stairwells, where we were treated to quite a surprise.  We both expected not to find anything else as we went up.  Instead we found a lot of pill bugs!  Even on the fourth floor stairwell.  There were also some giant spiders (dead), a couple of decently alive spiders, and some egg sacs.  We didn't even get all the pill bugs from the fourth floor, because there were just too many.  Hopefully The Doc finds it interesting as we do.  Tomorrow we're going to collect in the other stairwell to see if there just as many pill bugs and spiders there.

Sunday Sass

So me and the FAM (first apartment mate) watched Twilight tonight.  We watched because it is a movie we rag on all the time, but neither of us had ever seen, so we decided to fix that.  Let me say that Twilight was terrible and worse than I ever though.  My main problem with it was the Bella was an idiot.  She did so many stupid things that endangered her own life that it lead me to wonder if she had a brain in her head or what.  She ignores the advice she gives, ignores logic, and goes and does the stupidest things without thinking (like in the seen where she goes to James, she could have told someone to come and wait outside or something).  Edward seems to have multiple personalities, slipping between nice guy, aloof teen, and asshole.  Several times me and FAM were yelling the right thing to do at them, but we knew they couldn't hear us.  Also I have to say Kristen Stewart's acting was much worse than I expected.  She needs to take a class about breathing through her nose and using facial expressions.  Rob Psomething had stupid hair that was too big and gave him a giant forehead.  Taylor Lautner and Billy Burke were probably the best, Taylor because he did not have a lot of lines to mess up, and Billy because the character of Charlie was just ridiculous.  We want to watch all the movies in the saga, but it was so hard to get through this one.  Seriously, there wasn't a plot until the last 45 minutes of a movie that's over 2 hours long.  I don't know how we'll survive any more, but I hope we can.

Sixth Saturday

I live on bad reality TV.  And mostly reality shows on TLC.  If I could put Toddlers and Tiaras on a sandwich and eat it up, I would every day, all day.  Put some Breaking Amish mayo and anything with the word gypsy lettuce and I'm set.  I will generally watch anything on TLC (excluding Hoarding, Buried Alive, side note I thought it was Hoarders: Buried Alive until I looked at TLC's website, side side note since when doesn't buried have two r's in it?).  If I had to pick two shows I could only sustain myself on  watch, it would be Toddlers and Tiaras and My Strange Addiction.  Let me explain why I didn't pick Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, because I love her.  I don't see Honey Boo Boo as trash actually.  The family seems so genuine and obviously loves one another a lot.  I just find them extremely funny and watching their lives is like learning about a new culture.  Honey Boo Boo is like chocolate, great to eat but you can't live off it.  Toddlers and Tiaras on the other hand, that's a meal.

When I think of Toddlers and Tiaras, I make this noise (btw this is a link to a Louis CK video, he's NSFW but amazingly funny).  That show is mashed potatoes, gravy, peas, and meat loaf.  A whole delicious meal that I could eat every single day.

And I will continue this later, I really need to do work. >.> *Sigh* responsibilities.

Day 40 (laaaaate)

I guess I'm going to blogger hell, for the past 39 days I've written a post everyday even if it was only a couple of sentences.  And then last night I completely forgot to do it.  It had to happen eventually, but I thought I wouldn't.  Any way, yesterday were great.  X and I hung out at State while on a secret mission (not really but it sounds cooler).  Then we went back to the NRC where we tried to do some lab work.  Then we decided to go do some field work that The Doc told me and C about (I don't think I've mentioned C before, but she's The Doc's other intern who works on a different project about).  That field work was to go into the stairwell of the museum and collect whatever bugs we found down there.  It was fun for the first five minutes.  We worked a little longer, and then caught a science talk.  After the talk, C joined us in our insect hunt.  We caught a lot of spiders, which C is an expert in, and got a lot of dead bugs.  We didn't finish (we had to return the id we were using) but we don't think we're going to find a lot more insects as we go up.  The reasoning is that the stairs we first collected on were in an area without a lot of foot traffic and were at the ground level by doors. The stairs we need to continue on are further from any doors to the outside and probably have more foot traffic.  After that, we went back to the lab and did some work.  When I got back from work I made toad in a hole, and even though i burned the bread pretty good, it was great.  Me and my apartment mate (the first one, not the new one) talked for a couple hours about TV and movies.  There are also plans to maybe watch Twilight this weekend and point out everything wrong with it.  And that was my yesterday, sorry for the late post.

Day Thirty-Nine

Looked at fly.  Start collaborative effort paper.  Tomorrow should be a longer post.

Day Thirty-Eight

And a short post.  Today was mostly a research stuff kind of day.  Me and X will be collaborating on something, and I'm excited for it.  Too lazy to write, sorry bout it.

Day Thirty-Seven

 I may have found something potentially awesome (I'm not sure if I'm allowed to elaborate further or whatever).  Then X and I went on an adventure to State's library to make a photocopy of a journal entry that could be potentially helpful.  I am so jealous of State's library, it is huge, beautiful, and amazing.  X is also a really nice guy, and funny too.  It is great to work with people that are easy to get along with.  Then a little while after we got back from the library, I went to a meeting with The Doc.  The meeting was for one of her non-bee fly projects.  It was interesting sitting in on a meeting of science people working on a project.  Everyone seemed to alternate between scientific banter/serious talk and scientific banter/less formal talk.  The project is crazy in depth, and some parts went over my head, but I was still in awe.  I also got to meet some people that The Doc knows at State, and they were very friendly.  I have to say one thing, the building/room The Doc's meeting was in was a bit of a tease for me.  They were on the same floor and next to the complex of rooms where I think the guy that worked with my adviser I want to meet is.  I would have loved to explore it more, but that wasn't possible.  If I can confirm him, maybe I'll email him or something to see if he's around so I can meet him.  If I don't chicken out.

I went grocery shopping today too.  It was all about strategy.  I decided I can no longer go to the grocery store by my apartments (I was approached one day for money by a homeless man and I got a little creeped out, and one of my friends saw someone taking a dump by the sign for the store complex) so I went to one on my bus's route.  I managed to get everything and check out in time to get the earlier bus (I made a great tactical decision in using the self check out) and then I booked it to the stop.  I also bought potentially the greatest oreos ever, they have birthday cake filling.  I love them.  I would just eat the filling if I could, but that would be a waste of cookie.  I would buy them again.  I also bought knockoff Captain Crunch because I am cheap.

One of my room mates and I had another great discussion about Lion King.  It made me realize how effed up it really is, from a scientific stand point.  And we talked about other movies too, mostly disney/pixar.  All in all, great day.

Day Thirty-Six

Gaaah, another short post.  Sorry. >.>  I really want to finish a presentation tonight so I really have to work on that.  Short story of the day: X came back from vacation, I looked at my bee flies again, I worked on some presentation stuff, I came home, and found out we got a new room mate.  The end.

Sunday Salacity 2

I'm having a dilemma.  I really want a duck skull.  The skull is beautifully done, the beak is a nice, glossy black color, it has a very chic filigree pattern, and it is already mounted for hanging.  The price is right too, $11 plus $4.50 for shipping.  I haven't seen anything priced  Actually I just went on Etsy (where the skull is) and I saw two three  a bunch of other skulls that I like.  They aren't decorated, but they're intact and cleaned, with a similar price range.  Hot damn, so what do I do?  I love the dead animals, and they're on my birthday wish list.  But I don't know if I'll get them or not, because my family does not have the same dead animal love as I do.  But I need to save for books and food and important stuff.  But I really want a skull to decorate and own.  Dilemmas.  >.>

Fifth Saturday

Too lazy to write, enjoy picture I did for one of their friends for their birthday.

Day Thirty-Three

And today was  more adventures in pulling egg teeth off of baby birds.  Half of the papers I need are written in foreign languages, and of course, they're the ones I can't speak so I'm kind of S.O.L And I can't find any of the papers written in English online.  I found two journals I need, but each journal has three bee flies each.  Actually I hate the way I phrased that, one journal has the description of three flies, and the other the description of three other flies.  So annoying.  Hopefully I'll have better luck with the foreign language papers and google translate if that's how it ends up.  One of my friends told me that at least for German, google translate works okay, so if I need the German paper and can find it, at least I'll be covered for that.  And now I want a soda so hopefully the vending machine is restocked.  If not I will not be a happy camper.

Day Thirty-Two

Tooooooooday was a very frustrating day.  The Madagascar flies are kicking my ass, more accurately finding any paper that mentions what the species are.  I'm hoping to have more luck tomorrow in finding papers.  If not, we'll see what happens from there.  I really could go for some field work right now actually.  I love going out in nature and doing science things.  I know that The Doc wants to do some, so hopefully that will happen.  And now I'm eating cake because I have cake to eat.  I am going to make a powerpoint because I plan on doing a talk or three.  That's all I have to say for now, I'm not really in a writing mood.

Day Thirty-One

Well, it is official, I've been at my internship for a month!  I started June 10th, and now it is July 10th. I can't believe it has only been a month, it feels much longer.  It doesn't seem real that this time in June The Doc gave me a tour of the NRC and let me loose on the museum. It doesn't seem real that at the beginning of my time here I was frustrated and basically unable to identify the simplest bee fly, and now I'm looking at flies from Madagascar that may not even be described!!  There have been ups and downs, but I'm glad I've stuck through it.  I definitely see I have improved a lot, as pointed out by The Doc today.  To hear her say that makes me really proud, she's an expert after all, and I like birds.

Today I looked better at two guides that could be somewhat useful to me.  They both are scans from books, so I can't Ctrl+F the words I'm looking for.  In one, the things that could potentially be useful are written in foreign languages.  The other is in English, but is something like 900 pages long.  Neither has an index in the back, that I can find.  OH!  But in the foreign language one, I can understand one section, or at least parts of it because it is written in Italian.  Finding guides for the Afrotropical/Madagascar flies is like pulling teeth out of a hummingbird, in a word: impossible.  I guess technically improbable because baby hummingbirds probably have an egg tooth.  Still, it is pretty darn hard.

And in other news, my dad and I saw The Heat tonight.  I enjoyed it except for Michael McDonald and Taran Killam.  And that is basically because whenever I see either of them I think of Stewart and Cougar, and Mokiki and Jonathan Cavanaugh san.  And if you don't know who those characters are, click on the links.  I did enjoy seeing them, because I find them both hilarious and I'm glad they're able to do non-comedy roles (their characters in The Heat were pretty serious).  The best part was Sandra Bullock's character swearing for the first time.  It was awkward and hilarious.  Melissa McCarthy did a great job as Detective Mullens, and she was probably my favorite out of the whole cast.  I would recommend seeing it if you don't mind swearing or blood/seeing people get killed (not that many scenes, but some people aren't into it).

Day Thirty

And I forgot that I write my blog every day.  I need to go bed because I sleep through my alarms.  Today was good. I drank iced coffee without milk for the first time.   I looked at things from Madagascar.  I saw weird insect that Q told me was a wasp and then I figured out what kind of wasp it was.  I looked at flies.  My dad is here. It is nice to see him.  We got Mexican food.  It was great.  The End.

Day Twenty-Nine

Today I started looking at bee flies from Madagascar.  The fun thing about bee flies from Madagascar is that you have to use your imagination to figure them out.  They are not very well documented and that is pretty obvious.  Finding anything about Madagascar bee flies on (awkward gap filler y'all) 

google scholar/google/jstore/science direct/etc. is like pulling teeth.  I found a couple of dichotomous keys for South Africa, but they were pretty confusing/scattered.  It was a super fun day of eenie-meenie-minie ANTHRANCINAE.  Identifying the geron were pretty easy, they don't have the M2 vein and it is pretty distinct.  They also tend to be on the small side too, I think the biggest (at least in Chile/Argentina) is only 0.7 cm.  The great thing about these bee flies though is their lack of description.  There is a high chance that someone will find a new species of bee fly from this region (or India, because we have flies from there too).  I seriously hope I discover a new species, that is something on my bucket list and it would be kick ass to cross it off.  

Sunday Stills

The turtles that are on the same floor as my lab.

Bee fly eye close up 

A bee mimic 

The fishies!  I really like the french angel fish the best.

A poison dart frog.

An acrocanthosaurus skull, the terror of the South. 

Fourth Saturday

The topic of today's post is dead animals!


I knew I wanted to stuff dead birds the minute I heard my (future) adviser mention it during a presentation he gave during my freshmen seminar.  I didn't actually start until the spring semester of my sophmore year.  My adviser* who knew how to prepare study skins, made our** GA learn how to prepare study skins, and he taught us.  I remember my first bird, a juvenille white throated sparrow...it was terrible.  The meticulous notes I took while our GA did not serve me any good.  I was too heavy handed and tore many holes in the sides, managed to cut a leg off, and removed the tail when I was trying to remove the viscera sac.  I was so stressed out but somehow it was salvaged thanks to some strategizing with the GA.  After that bird, it got better.  I took everything very slowly, and tried to not use my scalpel whenever possible.  Sometimes I stuffed with my friends and sometimes I stuffed by myself.  Although it was nice to chat with friends, nothing beat stuffing alone.  Whenever I stuffed by myself, it was magical.  I would start log onto my Pandora and usually play some opera while I gathered my supplies.

Nothing beat the sound of beautiful singers while gently scraping away the fascia connecting the skin and muscles.  I just went into a zone where nothing mattered except the bird and breathing through my mouth***.  It was magical.  My favorite part of the whole process is probably scraping everything away and working up to the wings so that the bird is opened up and you can see the body under the feathers.  My least favorite part is sewing up after the cotton is in.  The cotton gets in the way and so do the feathers.  Mammals are a different story, I hate opening them.  Unlike birds, whose feathers grow in tracks and can be easily pushed away, mammal fur is every where and wont separate.  What I do like about mammals is that I can be a little more heavy handed because they have thicker skin.  You also get to peel the pelt away from the body which is totally awesome!!  I just wish that we had armatures to mount the pelts instead of me just using a dowel to stiffen them and stuffing them with cotton.  My boss's boss said he'd introduce me to the study skin/skeleton preppers, so hopefully they can teach me a thing or two that I can bring back and teach my friends.







*My adviser says he is no good at preparing study skins so that's why he didn't teach us.
**My GA taught me and two of my friends.  He was also the GA for the lab I was taking that my adviser taught.
***Some of the birds smelled like raw chicken and it was weird associating something that I eat with the dead bird in front of me.

Day Twenty-Six

Today was a quiet day.  It was just me and The Doc's boss (I think that's what he is considered). I did my bee fly thing.  It was fun until I had to pull more vials.  I could see that they were mostly pthiriine/usiinine, and I didn't want to go through them, they're  annoying to do. Phthiria is the major genus most of the time in the vials, but I can't just throw them in vial and say they're all phthirians.  That would be too easy. There is another fly that is usiinae/phthirinae that is fairly common, geron looks a lot like phthiria (but they don't have the M2 vein) tend to hide in there, and usually some metacosmus which are pretty small and hard to see unless to you through the whole vial.  I tried to select vials that I knew weren't pthiriine/usiinine, but they were few and far between.  I really wanted to start Africa, but I wasn't sure if The Doc wanted me to or not.  So I stuck with South America, which I like a lot.    I also had a fun conversation with The Doc's boss today.  He seems like a pretty cool guy, and I'm going to try talking to him more.  He's a mammals guy, and so I asked him a mammal question.  I wanted to make sure mammals couldn't be brood parasites.  The thought came to me after I finished reading "The Nesting Season" where the last chapters were dedicated to brood parasitism.  I thought no because mammals identify their young by their unique scent/sounds.  And he confirmed my thoughts.  He also said he'd introduce me to the study skin and skeleton preppers after I mentioned I prepare study skins at school.    I'm so excited, I hope I can learn something from them and bring it at school.



 And just for sh*ts and giggles, I'm going to post all the skins I did last semester.

The first bird I did, a juvenille white throated sparrow.  I rushed it and it came out poorly.  I managed to take off a leg and the tail, not to mentioned there were some hole in the sides.  Luckily the wings can cover the holes.

My second bird, an ovenbird.  It came out much better, that only thing I didn't like about it was I placed the  dowel in weird so it kind of shows under the skin.  Other than that everything is intact.

After doing my two birds, I decided to try my hand at mammals.  For some reason, I decided to start naming everything.  This is Christopher Columbus the star nosed mole.  I name him  Christopher Columbus because moles are explorers of the world underground.  I lucked out with him, it turned out he really was a male (I saw the testes after I cut him open).  He has a few bald spots but other than that, he looks good.

This is Horatio, but I call him Ho-Ho because he is a big studly male pigeon.  The only reason I know he's a he is because of his size and the colors on his neck (they're bold and bright).  I put him next to our other pigeon and she was significantly smaller.  By doing Ho-Ho I realized I preferred stuffing big birds.  

Say hello to Big Bertha!  She is a broad wing hawk and the second  predatory bird in the collection.   She was a little scary to do because she liked bleeding out of her mouth and nose periodically.  She was really cool because she had a mouse in her esophagus!!  I pulled it out in pieces and it was wicked cool.  

This is Esmeralda, the red squirrel.  I decided Christopher Columbus needed a friend.  I enjoyed stuffing Esmeralda more than Christopher Columbus because she of her skeletal structure.   She had a more defined neck, head, fore/hind limbs, and tail, while Christopher Columbus did not.  She also wanted to be everyone's friend.  Isn't that sweet? 

This, this is was my crowning achievement, Lord Byron Quincy Adams the Third, the male ring necked pheasant.  I saw him in the freezer and KNEW I had to do him.  He was tricky, due to his size and amount of feathers but I loved doing him.  I botched his wings a little bit, I wasn't sure if I had to remove muscle from them or what, and the guide we had didn't tell us how to do it.  I tried my best, but when I left him, he needed a rubber band to keep the wings next to his body.  He looks amazing in person though.

Here is a family portrait, from left to right: Christopher Columbus, botched white throated sparrow, Big Bertha, Lord Byron Quincy Adams the Third, Horatio, the ovenbird, and Esmeralda.  My babies <3 

Day Twenty-Five

Happy Fourth!  I did not go into work today, because the buses don't run on the 4th.  I took advantage of this by sleeping in until 11. It was glorious.  For the most part, I spent my day in the kitchen.  I made sweet potato chips which turned out okay.  I probably will not make them again though. After the chips, I made a cake!   I decided to do one of those flag cakes that are ever so popular for fourth of July.  The cake came out interesting. I should have leveled the batter in the baking pan first, because the cake came out humped.  But it tastes good, which is all that matters.  Frosting it was another challenge.  I used generic Cool Whip and it was fluffier/looser than I would have liked.  I made it work though, and I think it came out really cute.

Tomorrow is back to work to do finish sorting bee flies.  I found more from South America, so I'm in fly heaven!

Day Twenty-Four

So for the Pintester Movement 2.0 , I attempted to re-create Sonja's grocery bag basket (that she originally got from this blog post) last night.  It did not go as planned.  In true Pintester fashion, I did not actually have the necessary ingredients.  I lacked paper grocery bags, I used the next best thing...brown paper lunch  bags!  I mean, they're brown and bags like paper grocery bags so really, what's the big deal?

I cut the bottoms off of the bags, since they were a thicker.  After converting 1.75 inches into centimeters (roughly 4.4 cm if anyone is curious) I measured and marked the bags. It took me about four bags to get the right amount of strips, I think it was 18?  Then I cut them up into strips. And everything went downhill from there.  

As I mentioned before, I did not have the right ingredients for this pin.  That included glue but that didn't matter to me, because I had tape...or so I thought.  I could have sworn I packed tape with me, but after tearing apart my room for half an hour looking for this mythical roll of tape, I came up empty handed.  Thus-ly, I had to get crafty.  For my birthday, I had gotten this kind of crappy top coat that was too thick and kind of sticky.  Well, glue is thick and sticky, right? RIGHT?  So I used the nail polish as glue.  Despite being hella smelly, it worked(ish).

The next problem came when the instructions said to hold the strips into thirds.  HA.  HAHAHA.  Folding paper in a specific style is my weakness.  I just folded the strips so they all looked even enough in width.

Next came the weaving!  It was not such an epic fail.  I wish I had made them a little tighter but it worked.  Then I nail polished the corners together and waited for them to dry.  Some corners needed a little help staying down, so I put my jar'o'coins on top of them to help.

After the corners were dried I was hit by the struggle bus full force.  I had no clue how to incorporate the long strips into the sides.  So, I decided to get some assistants, disappointing chips I will not buy again and peanut M&M's which were not a disappointment.  Gurl's gotta eat.

In hind site, I should have made the long strips longer and folded them too.  Buuuuut the instructions didn't say to, and I didn't think to last night so I tried to weave them in big.  One long strip didn't go around the whole thing, and when I tried to incorporate another one, it just didn't.  The fact that I also didn't really understand how to weave in the long strips also didn't help, despite reading both blog posts.  The thin strips wouldn't stay up, the nail polish was failing, I was frustrated and I needed to get some sleep because I had to get up early to catch my bus.

That there is my finished product.  Can you hear it screaming in pain? I can. I put it out of its misery and laid it to rest in my trash can, but it is still watching me with disgust.  I may re-visit this with tape and the long strips folded thinly, buuuut it probably won't happen. I'm too lazy and I don't want to fold anymore paper.  No mas origami por favor (unless I am told the secret of incorporating the long strips).  

Day Twenty-Three

Today was a normal day.  I looked at bee flies.  I decided I now hate the bee fly of the nearctic dichotomous key  after looking at Chile/Argentina for a week and going back to North American bee flies.  Tomorrow I will put away some identified bee flies and probably explode in the process.  The Doc gave me a bunch of sub-families that I'm in charge of and each sub family has some genera, and some genera are more plentiful than others, and fitting them into the cases in rather annoying.  And frustrating, especially when all the small boxes are gone.  But, I will get through it and the cases will look great.  

In other news, I will be taking part in The Pintester Movement 2.0!  For those of you not familiar with the The Pintester , her name is Sonja Foust and she fails at pins so you don't have to.  She's a very funny writer, and I love reading her blog.  I didn't participate in the first Pinterester Movement, but in 2.0 the participants have to test out a pin that Sonja has done.   I will be attempting this at some point between now and Sunday, probably tonight since I am bored.  I will then write a post about and post it here and it shall be good.  That's all for now, hopefully I'll have a basket to show tomorrow! 

Day Twenty-Two

So I'm watching the Hunchback of Notre Dame (not the Disney version) right now.  I almost decided to stop watching it during the part where Quasi Modo was lashed and the crowd was insulting him.  But I continued on, because I really want to see it through to the end.  I'm enjoying it a lot, other than feeling bad for Quasi Modo.  I know at some point I will start bawling because something happens to him.

In other news, work was good today.  I can't believe I've almost been there a month.  I am recognizing the defining traits of each genera more quickly, and I'm not relying on the guide as much, although I did find a helpful wing diagram which explains the submarginal cells.  I'm enjoying what I'm doing and I think The Doc is impressed by my work and that I like identifying things.  I am going to start researching a topic because The Doc wants us to give a talk at some point.  I may have mentioned this before, but I don't remember.  I think I may do mine on insect mimicry or parasitism.  I haven't decided yet, but I'm leaning towards mimicry at this point.

That's all I have to say for now, I'll be sure to write again tomorrow.