Day, who cares? AKA the fate of this blog

I have been a terrible blog author this summer.   Last summer I have a lot of post, rarely any of them late and full of content.  And this summer, so many late posts or incredibly short.  Part of it is situational, I lack the learning curve, co-workers, and exciting challenges.  Part of it is laziness.  As for the future of the blog, it's up in the air.  I will try to bring it back strong for during the school year where I am doing (hopefully new) research.  As for the rest of this summer, I am going to Atlanta, GA on Thursday until Monday, and I doubt I will write about that (I will be working for my parents).  Next Friday I will leave for Peru until the 20th, and the internet is going to be terrible, so no updates.  Then I only have 10 ten days left in NC.  I will definitely update after Peru, and we'll see how it goes from there.

Blog will resume next week

I'm really not in the mood to write, I'm taking a small break.  Sorry whoever reads this blog. :(

Day 27

:(

Day 26

https://twitter.com/NatDoesScience

One day I will write again

Day 25

SO LAZY NO POST.  I went to evolution again and then went to work in the late afternoon.  Evolution was awesome.  Hopefully I can find my motivation to write again. :(

Day 24

I went back to Evolution today but I am too tired to write a post.  I will put something here tomorrow.

Day 23

Today I attended my first scientific conference ever, Evolution 2014 (conveniently held in Raleigh).  I arrived a little after one, and after a slight delay in receiving my badge, I was off.  Luckily for me, Evol2014 (what all the hip kids are saying) has an app.  The app is not a perfect app (the back button brings you to the top of the page and not to where you previously were and is a little laggy) but it works pretty darn well.  Using the app, I was able to determine what presentations.   I spent most of my day at the sexual selection presentations, because that is probably my favorite topics.  Unfortunately I missed the avian evolution presentations (I'll be checking out Monday's though).  Many of the sexual selection presentations were bird related (huzzah!) and I enjoyed them very much.  My only wish was that my BFF, Dr. S (I don't actually remember if I nicknamed him, but there we go) was there with me.  Mainly because I almost wanted someone to talk to.

I particularly enjoyed one talk about sexual selection and plumage colors in barn swallows, on the basis that ZOMG someone else uses feathers for research.  The speaker also did an excellent job presenting.   I also enjoyed another talk by a scientist that was interested in female singing in Drosophila virilis.  She did many things to her flies, just to prove that they did duet and the females needed certain cues.  Another speaker did a presentation on song divergence and visual signals, which was cool.  One of the NRC's employees presented similarities and differences in armpit fauna of humans and primates, which was interesting.  And someone did a plant study that didn't make me want to rip my eyes out.  All in all, good day and I'll be going back tomorrow.

Day 22

Flashback Friday to whenever I took these pictures, nothing post worthy today. 

Day 21

Today I held a bacculum.  It was amazing.  A real scientists also validated my career choice.  I had an awesome day.  Too tired to write, but know this intern is truly content with herself.

Day 19 (Late) and Day 20

So last night I crashed way early and did not get a chance to blog.  Yesterday I did my normal gig, I looked for papers, I started the process to dissect genitals, I tried do more fly ID.  Pretty typical.  My day got a little more interesting when The Doc's collaborators came.  The Doc is working on a huge awesome insect related paper that I will not talk about directly until it is published for sure.  But this project is expansive and will definitely be the springboard for many other scientists.  There was a little reception for the people that arrived last night and I attended.  The food was excellent, and I met a lot of people smarter than I.  Everyone was very friendly, and I did my best to understand their small talk, until I talked with Mite Dude (who actually hates studying mites) and The Doc.    I wish I was better at small talk, and did not have to wait to be invited into a conversation, definitely something I should improve on.  That's the end of Day 19.

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Day 20 was an interesting day.  It was the first day of meetings with collaborators.  I attended the morning meeting.  Many concepts are way over my head because of the subject matter and because it really isn't up to my interests.  I could still appreciate it thought.  I left early though, because The Doc's Boss was holding the first in a series of classes on science communication.  Today's lesson was on using twitter.  I was not really a big twitter user before hand, I had cycles of  where I used twitter for stupid thoughts, and then gave up on it.  The talk today really inspired me to give twitter a chance for professional reasons.  It's good for outreach and communication within your field.  So hit me up @NatDoesScience where I will try my best to be a good science intern.  And the great thing about this is that I talked more with TDB's interns and they're nice and it's like I have friends or something now.  Hopefully my day will go by a little easier now.  In other news I attempted to do a genitalia dissection today.  Luckily I started with the one where I have plenty of males, because it did not go well.  I emailed Bug Man, and he is going to show me how to do the others.
Other than the meeting, the class, and the botched dissection, I spent a decent portion of my day editing the species description paper.

I am pretty sure I dreamed finding a book/article of Bee Fly Anatomy.  I went back through many sources, and did not find what I thought I saw before.  But because of this dream/hallucination, it lead to me do some important editing of the paper.  I found a source we already had cited and read the begin, and I made the executive decision to update the terminology based off of this source.  It was more recent the places I used originally and it also shortened the materials section.  I also think it makes the paper more readable (it got rid of a lot of Roman numerals, which I hate).  I also complied a list of things that need to be completed and what we have done already.  Tomorrow I hope to attend The Doc's meeting all day, or for most of it at least, the topics are a little more interesting to me.  I also hope to write more scientific things on this blog instead of keeping it purely personal.

Day 18 (slightly late)

Well, this post will be late, but not as late as most.  I have done much worse with posting in a timely fashion.  Today I went into work and worked a bit on this slideshow presentation about bee flies. Very exciting stuff, because I am gaining more information about bee flies.  For instance, the first bee flies were present over 140 million years ago.  Bee flies are also extremely understudied, partially due to their parasitoid nature as larvae.  After working on the slide show, I went to check on the paper and did a few adjustments,  and I organized the Systropus.  Just before lunch The Doc's Boss held a lab meeting which I attended.  It was nice to hear what everyone else is working on.  I even talked to one of his interns on our way there.  Huzzah!  Possible social interactions for me with someone who has similar interests!

After the meeting, I we went back to the lab where I tried to keep busy before I had to go to my meeting at State.  I went through a couple of bee fly vials, looking for a specific kind of fly.  Unsuccessful so far, but I have hope.  I then caught the bus to State, Systropus and last year's fly in tow.  My meeting was with Bug Man, he's one of the co-authors and also the photographer for the paper we're working on.  He took a couple pictures The Doc and I wanted for the paper.  He also told me how to tell the difference between the male and female Systropus.  He also gave me the supplies to dissolve the abdomen so i can check out their genitalia.  That is an adventure for technically today. And in other news I lost my bus pass and am pretty sad about that.  Oh well, guess I get to go on an adventure tomorrow after worl.

Day 17

Writing this before I forgot.  Today I spent an exciting day grocery shopping.  I was running low on edibles and needed to restock my pantry (aka my side of the fridge and a cabinet).  After waiting for the bus, off I went to the shopping center!    It may have been faster (and probably cheaper) for me to walk to a grocery store closer to my apartment, but last summer I was approached by a (possibly homeless) man asking me for money for the bus.  I was constrained by backpack, umbrella, and groceries did my best to nope out of that situation because I was in no position to defend myself if the situation was to go sour.  After that I was completely turned off/afraid to go to the grocery store and instead went to the one that is a fifteen minute bus ride away thereafter.  Getting back on track, my first stop was RiteAid, where I purchased three sets of headphones for only 9.99 (as opposed to one set for 9.99) as well as gum.  Then it was off to the grocery!

I, being of fat ass, flabby stomach, but good heart made many healthy choices at the store.  Whole wheat bread, fat free milk, whole wheat pasta (because I got 0.5 oz more than the tri-colored vegetable pasta, they were almost the same nutritionally) Nature Valley Granola bars, in the honey flavor.  Such health choices!  Fruits-apples, peaches, mangoes, and tomatoes, eggplants, and carrots (by technicality). Wow!  Onion and garlic, two staples in my dinner.  Celery, because why not?    The only places where I deviated from the health was hot dogs (chicken hot dogs, not sure how I feel about that, but they were cheapest) and a bottle of Ramune. I have to say I could have done worse than that.  Ramune is only 90 calories per bottle (as opposed to soda which is close to 200), plus it's fun to open.  The Ramune was delicious by the way, it was coconut flavored (the store had lychee, strawberry, grape, coconut, melon, and original flavor).  It was a delicious artificial coconut flavor, very light and not clawingly sweet 10/10 would drink again.  I may have to pick up another bottle when I go back.  The grocery store had a huge selection of Asian foods, and if I had more money to throw out on groceries, I would have gotten a lot from that section  such as wasabi peas, also known as the greatest snack ever.

After waiting for the bus home, I arrived back at my apartment, groceries in tow.  I promptly unloaded my goods and made a sandwich in the kitchen (gasp!  A female stereotype or something) which I promptly devoured.  Then I went back into my lair where I continued to write a story I had started earlier.  Fun fact, the story was inspired by the shitty princess story of my highschool days, but will be much better.  I may even turn the story into a book, complete with water color picture by moi.  And now, I am watching a grown man assemble a Kracie Popin' Cookin' set on youtube.  Also I discovered what I thought were mosquito on the back of my knees are actually chigger bites.

And this everyone, has been my exciting day.  I hope you enjoy a full post full of boring details of my life.  Stay tuned for possibly more interesting details of my life tomorrow.

The Weirdest Part About Growing up (Day 17)

There's a lot of things in life I don't like to do.  And closer to the bottom of that is list going back and reading things I wrote when I was younger.  It is safe to say if present day Natalia met younger Natalia, she would make her have a serious come to Jesus moment and then comfort her.  You see, younger Natalia tends to not be very happy with life.  This makes present day Natalia feel extremely awkward.  You see, present day Natalia tries her best not to dwell on her unhappiness, for a number of reasons.  She tends to block those moments out, and the written stylings of Natalias past make her cringe with guilt and other emotions.  

Last winter I found the diary I wrote in when I was only a wee high school freshman.  It was pretty god awful. Past Natalia had written about how she had a crush one of her male friends (but gave a code to him in case her parents ever read the diary).  Although eventually she fell out of love with him (I forget if it was because I found out he had a girlfriend or he wasn't as wholesome as I thought he was).  She also created an imaginary boyfriend (cancer survivor) who eventually wouldn't even talk to her.  I think she made him a cancer survivor so he would be dependent/clingy to her.  And why would she want this?  Because freshmen Natalia was not happy with her friends.  Young Natalia's friends were very much anime nerds, something that she has not (and probably never be) into, very into music, or those who were not were just not really interested in being outside of school friends with her.  None of them really shared her interests that much too, which she didn't like either.  But young Natalia was not good at making friends, and was stuck with that group for high school. Although she did make a couple new ones later on.  Spoiler alert, out of all the people that were my "friends" in high school, I only talk/hang out with three.  

I also found an old gmail (I'm thinking my junior of high school, because that's around the time I made my gmail) of a story I wrote.  I started to read it, and  besides thinking it was absolute crap, I couldn't remember why I would ever write something like that.  The reason did not dawn on me until the end when I read the description of the main male character.  I'm not even going to go into the story, but basically was this guy I liked as the main male and myself as the main female, and things seemed like they might happen. 

Even my high school Facebook posts were terrible.  I never thought they were that bad, until I went back to read them with my roommate.  Seriously I would have killed that person.  I mean, a lot of the posts were a cry for attention, for someone to ask me what was wrong, etc. but they were pretty god awful.  And looking back at that stuff makes me realize how much I didn't like high school.  I don't really have any written recordings of my unhappiness in college.  Actually I feel like college is where I hit my proverbial stride.  I mean, there are some downer times, but nothing god awful like my high school experiences.  There's also the continuous love story that isn't which is my life, but that's not appropriate for this blog.  

I try not to remember all the times I was unhappy, because I don't need to carry that negativity around with me.  I also don't think of myself as an unhappy person, so all those times just make me feel disingenuous.  After  reading all of my past woe this year and last, one of my new goals in life is to be happier than I was the previous year.  Because if I have to read another piece of literature about how I have no friends like me or no boyfriend, I will probably put myself out of my misery*.

This post was brought to you buy the fact that I did nothing all day. 

*I will not put myself out of my misery like that, but instead take the steps of becoming a happier person 

Day 16 (late)

Another late post.  One day I will get better at posting on time, I just need to stop falling asleep early.  Yesterday was a lot of paper hunting for Systropus.  The Doc really wants a new paper on Systropus, and I can't blame here, they're so unique looking, it would be cool if we did have a new species.  I also began working on a presentation on bee flies.  Not an exciting day.  Then I cam home to an exciting dinner of cold chicken and cereal.  Another short and boring post.  Sorry y'all.

Day 15 (late)

I'm having such a hard time wrapping my head around that fact that I've been here for two weeks, it feels much longer.  It is also weird that it feels that I've accomplished more in the two weeks I've been here than in the last month of my internship when I was competent. Also this post is going to be short because I started it the day it should have been posted, and now I'm continuing it at work before it gets too busy.  Yesterday was a lot of paper hunting and research to try to narrow down some fly choices, and to figure out specimen we may need to order.  The Doc sat down with me and we made a list of things that need to be accomplished still.  Nothing earth shattering, but useful for me.

Day 14

An early post for you all today, because I will probably forget to do it after I make dinner.  I arrived at work today and decided to not look at bee flies (GASP!).  I really need The Doc to look at a couple things before I go any further and create a plan of action of sorts.  Instead, I looked up all genus Bombylius in Africa (20, but only four species are found in South Africa).  After doing this, I began a search for all the bee flies of Peru.  I am not sure if where I'm going there will be any, but if there are, we gonna be to prepared.  Unlike Malagasy bee flies, Peruvian bee flies have much more literature identifying them.

  It was not exciting work and I was pretty bored.  Doc's Boss's right hand woman, Mammal Master, was giving a talk about loons.  She's given this talk before and I've heard it, but it's a nice talk to listen to.  Her audience was primarily a summer camp, and I'd say all the kids were less than 10 years old.  They asked her very good questions, as did the adults in the audience.  After MM's talk, I ate a delicious lunch of cold pasta, and went back to work on the guide. Just when I thought I was ready to gouge my eyes out, Dr. Student walks in!  Huzzah!  He apologized for not going to do field work yesterday, and instead we went today.  Needless to say, that guide did not get done.

Field work was interesting, I've never really done entomological work before so it was a nice experience.  The first site we went to had the first malaise trap. Malaise traps look a lot like a tent, and funnel insects into a death chamber (a jar full of alcohol). There were a lot of insects in the jar (hopefully they were the ones that Dr. Student needs) and after replacing full death chamber with an empty one, we walked around looking for wounded trees.  Some of the flies that Dr. Student needs are only found where trees are wounded, have sap flowing, and there's some kind of mold or fungus growing.  We did not see any trees with wounds at site one, but we did see turtles and a five lined skink (I think)!  After a patrol of site one, we moved onto site two.

Site two was the place where we went last summer, this time there were horses there too.  Two chestnuts, one bay, and a brown (which is technically bay, E_, AtAt or AtAa as opposed to E_,Aa or AA).
 Site two had the second malaise trap, which was in between two creeks and was a bit of an adventure to get to.  Dr. Student let me change the death chamber at this malaise trap which was cool, it had a scorpion fly in it.  We then walked around site two, looking for wounded trees.  We did find one, but the wound was not bleeding.  We also tried to catch flies that were attracted to this dead looking mushroom, I did not catch any but I believe Dr. Student was successful.  After site two, we said good bye to the horses and went to site three.

Site three did not have a malaise trap.  It did have a tree that was bleeding last year, and Dr. Student hoped that it was still going with the flow.  And in fact, it was still flowing, and the tree adjacent to it was wounded and bleeding as well.  We caught at least one of the flies he needed, unsure about the second one.  One of the trees was making noises as the sap leaked out, which made it sound as if the tree was going to explode.  You'd be surprised at the diversity of insect life gathered around the sap flows.  Truly impressive.

And before I go to the concluding part of my day, just a couple words about Dr. Student.  He is a pretty cool dude.  He knows so many things about insects, he can identify these tiny little flies without a microscope, and he also finds the names of Ikea furniture hilarious.  I wish I had part of his brain, because DAMN that boy is smart.

I came home to my apartment and checked for ticks.  I have never gotten a tick in my life and I've done plenty of things in the field. After my first search, I got nothing.  But is a lay in bed, absent mindedly scratching my back, I felt something.

A female lone star tick.  I immediately put her in a test tube as she awaits punishment for her indiscretions. Luckily for me she did not latch on, because lone stars can cause a myriad of terrible things.  Dr. Student suggested microwaving her.  It is quite tempting, but as of now, she sits on my desk.  

And that my readers was my most exciting day thus far.  It felt great to be outside and interacting with another human being.  

Day Thirteen

First off, I would like to apologize for the string of late posts.  It is partly because I have been falling asleep earlier without intending too, partly because I'm lazy, and partly because I forget to do so.  I need to write more consistently so that posting about my day is in my blood.  I'm also sorry that many of the posts are very repetitive, but this is a bit out of my control.  Unlike last year, I'm working on my own (for the most part), so I really don't have any stories of interactions with colleagues.  I'm also more experienced, so I am not as frustrated or determined to conquer ID's as last summer.  I also know what to expect more, so there are also really no twists or turns or me needing to vent my feelings.  My roommates all tend to keep to themselves for the most part too, so no fun stories involving them yet.  Now onto my day.

Channeling my inner Advisor, I wore my new polo today (98% of the shirts I've seen in him are polos).  I went to work and worked on editing the PowerPoint that accompanies the talk I'm going to give eventually.  Then I went about confirming if the Systoechus we have are actually that genus, because I was having some doubts.  I took lots of pictures with the webcam attached to the microscope, so I can compare dried identified Neartic specimens to the alcohol ones.  That was kind of useless, because The Doc came in and confirmed that they were Systoechus (because she also had her doubts about them as well).  After this, I went through the Systropus and wrote a semi-detailed account of each variety we had.  Spoiler alert, there are three.  But two of them look very similar, so I want The Doc to look at them to confirm that I am seeing two different species, not differences within a species.  Prior to this, I made the poor choice of purchasing an iced coffee to go with my PB&J sandwich.  The coffee made me slightly shakey and my arm muscles felt twitchy, so handling the flies a little nerve racking.  And for the first time the muscles where my neck meets my shoulders became pretty sore, which had never happened.  They're still sore, I'm hoping a hot shower will loosen them up.  After the Systropus sorting I went through Bee flies of the world to key out the small black flies that The Doc thought were phthiriine.  I wound up on Bombylius, and two genera found in Australia that were later renamed Bombylius.  Definitely something to show The Doc.

After work I came home, messed around on my laptop, made dinner, and here I am writing this blog.  I'm sorry this post isn't more exciting, but my day was not that exciting.  Dr. Student had texted me last night, telling me to wear my sneakers because he was going to bring me to check his insect traps today.  That never happened, and I was a little disappointed.  I love doing field work and a day outside would have been nice.  Oh well, maybe next time.

Day 12 (late once again)

Post to be written here after I am done at work today.

Typical work day yesterday.  I sorted more flies, wrote more in the species ID, and went home and ate cold mac and cheese.  I looked over GRE things and realized I must study.  My life is boring. 

Lazy Saturday (Day 11)

Pictures I took while I was out and about because I just realized what time it was. Hopefully there will be more words tomorrow. (Edit, I thought mobile blogger had published this already, it did not so now it is after Sunday's late post)

Day 12 (late)

Sorry for the lack of posting this weekend. I really dislike mobile blogger I hate writing on my iPod because I have big thumbs so a many times I hit the wrong button. I didn't do anything interesting Sunday, nor do I feel like writing out a well written post. Instead look at these pictures I painted today. I cannot wait to have my laptop back. I miss that keyboard.

Day 10 (late)

Sorry for another late post, but once again I fell asleep early. It was nice but I really can't get into the habit of falling asleep at nine. I'm writing on mobile again (forgot my laptop charger at work) so this will be brief. 

I began going through the different genera I had the key for. I found a couple of variations in Geron which I was not expecting. I tried to figure out the Systoechus but the French translation of the description is unhelpful. I did some of the Systropus as well. They definitely are not one of the species (it is black and yellow). There is a possibility it is the other, but The Doc thinks that there are two species within the group, which is awesome. 

And that's about it for yesterday. I also did some laundry (very exciting, I know) and got food from the cafe (vegetable quesadilla...delicious). I'm going back to the lab today to see if anyone is there so I can get my laptop charger and take some pictures of book pages I need. Will post later (unless I fall asleep again). 

Day 9 (Late)

So being the wild child crazy college student and museum intern that I am, I fell asleep at 8 pm (accidentally) and completely forgot I had to write a blog post. TGFMB (thank goodness for mobile blogger) everyone. Yesterday was somewhat productive. Actually I done did good. 

I found the descriptions for both Systropus and the Systoechus species, and translated them. This means that I can attempt to ID the specimen I have sorted, as well as the Geron. Other than that major accomplishment, I sorted more flies (like a boss) and will be doing another talk in the Daily Planet next week. Go me, being all science like. And that's all that happened yesterday, stay tuned for a post later tonight (unless I fall asleep again)!

Day 8

After hurriedly getting all my belongings together, I went out to the bus.  Sometimes I wish I had my own car here.  My bus tends to be crowded in the morning, but luckily I did not need a seat buddy.  I got into work and did a couple things (double checking what the paper needed and trying to ID a fly that Michelle and I haven't been agreeing on).  I then took another bus to NC State, I had a meeting with The Doc and Bug Man about the species ID paper I started last summer.  Because I think with my head, I downloaded an app that has a map of the NC State's campus so I could find the building.  What I didn't realize is that the app also used something like google maps, to it showed me as a blue dot navigating around, which made finding the building easier.  I know, I'm a wild woman you guys.

The meeting went well.  We went over the list of things to do, and got some of them accomplished.  Bug Man made some good suggestions about the paper.  Afterwards, I went back to the museum and ate my sandwich.  After not having meat for a week (unless you count ramen soup) a turkey sandwich was delicious.  After sandwich time, was writing the paper time.  I spent an hour or so looking at my flies genitals (pictures and in real life) and trying my best to describe them.  I even took photos of them, maybe I should consider a career in raunchy fly photography.  They're pretty hairy.  

Today, I did not sort any more flies.  This was because it decided at the meeting to go through vials that came from the same place the fly from last summer.  The issue is that the majority of the flies do not have a label that gives a location (it's coded or something), and the flies that do have a label that gives their location is nowhere near where my fly came from.  I did actually go through a vial that was collected from the same location at the same time, but no new fly.  Womp Womp.  I spent a lot of my time trying to find old papers that we need to ID the other flies.  I might have found one of them (hooray), but I can't be sure yet.  

After work, I came back to my apartment and made dinner.  It was half good (the meat rocked, the rice was meh).  I also talked to one of my roommate's, Cloudy (name based off her major) for awhile about the benefits of riding your polar bear to work in Alaska.  It was a pretty good night.  

Day 7

Today did not start off well.  I slept a little longer than I should have, so I was in a rush to get ready and catch my bus.  Because my mind was else where, I forgot to bring my laptop charger.  My laptop's battery has been on the decline, it used to be good for three hours without a charger, now I'm lucky if I get an hour and a half.  And of course, I did not realize this until my battery had almost ran out.  I was busy making labels, a tedious and sometimes unnecessary task.  Luckily, I emailed myself the word document the labels were saved on.  My computer shut itself off just as I went to go hook it up to the printer.  Hand-writing label crisis averted, I ended up printing off one the lab's Macs.  Then I got down to the really fun stuff, sorting flies.

I was excited to come in and sort today.  This was because I found the vials that my fly came in last summer.  By this, I mean that I had large glass test tubes (as opposed to the plastic vials with the screw on tops) that were backed to the metaphorical gills with flies.  This was how I found my fly last year, the tube it came in was crowded with a myriad of others, and I found it while sorting.  I knew I was trying to get lightening to strike twice, but I got lucky last summer, didn't I?

Sadly, the luck did not strike me today.  I barely got any of the genera I'm  interested, just a lot of the flies that we decided to avoid.  :-/ I went back to and tried to key out one of the flies with weird wing venation again.  I found a genus I didn't consider for it, but I want to run it by The Doc. I tried to key out the phthiriine/usiinine fly, so far no luck with that either.  Friday is still Geron day though.

Other than a less than successful day fly sorting, I went to the grocery store to pick up a bottle of D and a couple other assorted groceries.  I went back to my apartment, made some dinner (mac'n'cheese with broccoli, yum), and now I need to figure out what else needs to be done on a paper we're working on.  I have a meeting at State tomorrow with The Doc and one of the other co-authors (not sure if I named him previously, but I will call him Bug Man, because that's his job) to talk about the paper.  That should be interesting, hopefully.

Day 6

Another day, another bee fly.  I have declared in my head that Friday will be Geron day.  At my table, I have the genera of interest separated onto post-it notes with their respective genera on them.  The Geron post-it is over flowing with tubes full of these flies.  Since I have the paper that describes them, I really ought to go in, use the key, and figure out if I'm looking at any new species.  The only issue is that I hate the guide, it was written in 1974, and since then the terms for the wing has changed (the author calls the R veins S veins).  I cannot find out the old terms the author is using, no matter what I do.  I'm also thinking that there's a possibility that he's using terms for another family of flies.

In other news, I found a family of flies that I don't have on my list of bee flies of Madagascar.  The family is Afrotropical however, so there is the possibility that they some how got over to Madagascar.  The only issue is that neither The Doc nor I can figure out what genus they belong to.  Both are Afrotropical, but we cannot make a good match of where they belong.  They don't exactly match the characteristics of either genus, but we can't think of a better match.

Other than the new family, I did my typical day to day thing.  Dr. Student invited me to go out and check his insect traps, which is super cool.  I went to a lab meeting today and learned more about what everyone else is doing, which was great to hear.  I also found out I'm D deficient (make all the jokes you want, I am) so now I have to buy pills.  And I'm scheduled to get my yellow fever shot, and my second hep A shot.  My life is not incredibly exciting.

Sunday Free Style (Day Five)

So every Sunday, I will write a post about the topic of my choice.  This Sunday is:

The Worst Part of My Job 

I love my job (internship), I honestly, truly, do.  I am so lucky and so privileged to be in the position I'm in and to have the experiences I've had.  In no way am I complaining about what I do, because what I do is awesome (at least in my opinion).  I spend all day looking at flies that no one has ever seen before, and that is so cool.  I work in a beautiful, large lab, filled with nice people, and have a great boss.  There is a darkside to my seemingly perfect job.  The papers.

Last summer I complied a list from two sources of known species of bee flies.  One of the sources had a list of papers/articles/journals of where these bee flies were described.  The bad thing (or good thing if you want to become an expert) about bee flies is that a lot of the literature describing them is pretty old.  The oldest paper on my list dates from 1840.  The youngest paper on my list is from 1974.  Luckily I do not need to find all of these papers, because I am ignore the anthracine flies, and the bulk of the papers describe those.  Unfortunatly, the papers I do need to find date 1926, 1934, and 1840 (last summer we found the one from 1974).

And how is my search for the papers I need going?  Not so great.  You see my dear readers, two of the three papers are written in French (the oldest one and the one from the 30s) and the other is written in German.  I have six and a half years of Italian and one semester of Spanish 101 under my belt. The Doc said not to worry, because she will find people who can translate them for us.   The other issue is actually finding them.

I have not found these papers.  I have found their citations.  I have references to them on online archives.  I might have found one, but I can't read French.  Honestly, the worst part of my job is finding the papers.  I can spend hours on Google Scholar, online data bases, and archive websites looking for papers, and come up with nothing.  It is the most unfulfilling and discouraging part of what I do.  In the time I spend searching for papers with no result and the pit of sadness that accompanies it, I could be keying out flies and feel happy with my accomplishment.

And this my friends, is the worst part of my job.  Googling papers.

Picture This! (Day 4)

We passed this truck on our way to NC. It would have been better if the eagle was crying tears of FREEDOM and 'MURICA.

Day 3

Going to keep this short because I have a headache.  Finished going through a bag.  The Doc came in, and I showed her some flies that I thought were a different variety of Geron or in family bombyliinae.  She thinks they are phthirine or usinine based on their antenna.  Such confusion, looks like I'll have a project Monday.  That's about it. Bleh.

Day 2

As I sit her on this extremely large mattress in an extremely small bedroom, enjoying a bowl of ramen, allow me to tell the tale of day two.  

Day two was similar to day one, but more productive.  I situated myself at my station, powered on the TV and microscope (the scope was a webcam attached to the TV so people can see what I am looking at), and went to fly town.  I spent the majority of my working on one bag of flies.  I was coming across a couple issues with most of the flies.  

1) I keyed a majority out to be Exoprosopa.  That should be the end of the story right?  Wrong.  Many of the flies were missing the distinct Exoprosopa antenna.  This is what the antennae should look like: 

Most of the antennae I was looking at were lacking that second flagellomere, which is a defining trait of the genus.  Dr. Student looked at one, and said that it didn't look broken.  The Doc looked at them and couldn't decide if it was "intentional" or not.  Seriously, what are the odds that six flies all have broken flagellomeres? Actually, potentially really good, because The Doc might have found an antenna with the stub of a broken flagellomere.

2) One of the flies obviously lacked this antenna trait and I keyed them out to be Litorrhynchus which I think is still technically Exoprosopa but  these mouth parts were projecting pretty far beyod the oral cavity.  But the wings did not really resemble this one picture of Litorryhncus wings I had, but they weren't really Exoprosopa-y either. 

Eventually The Doc came in and we came to the mutual decision that it would be better for me to stay away from the anthracine flies (ex. Exoprosopa, Villa, Anthrax, etc.) because there is a lot of them and they're annoying/difficult to identify because of their traits.  My focus is going to be else where now.  I found a bunch of Systropus which are pretty cool wasp mimics, a bunch of Gerons which I have literature on, and some Systeochus which are adorable.  I also have two flies in bombyliinae, that are different from the Systeochus I sorted.  I then need to go through everything else and pull out the non anthracine flies.  My life is going to be somewhat easier, and some what harder because finding the literature of the known species so I can compare to what I have is going to be a pain. 

Day 1 (late)

Today marks the first official day of my internship at the Museum of Natural Sciences (again).  Let me give you a brief cast of characters of who I'm working with:

Me!

The Doc (Sort of working with me, it is complicated and it's not my place to go into it on this blog.  So good to a lowly undergrad like me.)

Dr. Student or DS for short (The Doc's grad student who actually isn't on my project.  Pretty cool guy though, super smart and nice.)

So for reasons I'm not getting into, my summer at the museum is going to be a lot of independent work for The Doc, and a few scheduled events. I will be attending Evolution 2014, sitting on The Doc's meeting with some Germans, possibly be doing some bee fly ID at  NCSU, attending a class for the museum interns, probably giving a talk at the end of the summer, doing some research/writing for The Doc's website, and Peru!  I'm probably forgetting a couple things, but you know I'll be writing about them.  Onto my first day!

I got to the museum early (despite grabbing breakfast with my dad and showing him the fish tank), and even though The Doc said to wait in her office if I arrived early, I was kind of afraid to go into the lab, because I wasn't sure if I would be remembered or not.  It didn't matter because no one noticed me walk in and The Doc re-introduced me.  My morning started with a nice chat with The Doc about what I'm doing this summer, what her goals for me are, what she's been up to, etc.  We ran to her car to get the Malagasy bombyliids.

The one bag of dried specimens I tried to ID were terrible.  A lot of headless bodies, a lot of heads, missing legs, missing abdomens, missing claws, wings I couldn't manipulate.  It was not a good day for ID-ing, and I have a feeling most of the others will be just as poor.  That's why I switched to specimens in alcohol.  Much easier to manipulate and in much better shape.  My eagerness to start identifying overtook the fact I had to make labels.  Label making is so tedious, because you can't waste the special paper, and therefore end up making labels for everything (which is inevitable).

Once labels were made, I began to go through the vials to start, identify (more like educated guessing, because the literature on Malagasy is old, difficult to find [and by this I mean does not exist on the internet], or written in another language when it can be found. Last summer I tried my darnedest to find any species of bee fly native to Madagascar, so I kind of have a vague idea of what I can see and what would be "normal" for the region.  Then again, it is Madagascar and there are so many undiscovered and poorly documented organisms there.  And that, pretty much was my first day back.

A resurrection

The spring semester of my junior year has ended, which means writing on this blog can become a thing again.  I should probably update whoever reads this about my life since April 4th.  I can't right now, I'm at work.  In other news, I will start writing about working at the museum again! But later I will, because as I said, at work (and trying to get the printer to work on my computer).

Updates of my life

Well, I finally have some time to write a blog post.  I'm currently in my lab at school waiting for my adviser to teach me how to use a stats program.  I had major issues with my data in the beginning of the year, most of my feathers did not correlate to blood information.  This meant I had to go rummaging through the back of the lab for more feathers, which I did find.  This also meant I had to scan 32 more feathers, which translates into 288 readings.  By the time some minor issues with the new data was worked out, my adviser was too busy to teach me how to do the stats program. But today, I will be analyzing my data. Please offer a sacrifice to the results gods that I have something.*

In other news, I will be returning to North Carolina, so my "Adventures in Interning" series will continue although the blog will still be "Touched by Science".  I will be identifying Malagasy bee flies, and probably will doing other things.  One of those other things is GOING TO PERU!  I have no idea what I'll be doing but it is Peru.  We could be digging around in dirt or breaking big rocks into small rocks, and I wouldn't care.  I'm so excited to go to and do research in the RAIN FOREST.  Hopefully I will have the internet there and can continue for the week and a half or so I am down there.  

That's about it with my life right now, I have so cool pictures from when I was attempting to dissect chick embryos that I might post later.  I'll try to update more often though, I go on spring break soon so I have the time then to do some more writing. 

*My adviser and I just tried to analyze my data.  For some reason instead of entering as F, the females all entered as 8.11. And I did not know how to import the data when he had my re-save my excel file as a weird text file.  WHY DOES THIS DATA SET HATE ME?!

A possible dilemma

A possible dilemma is exactly what it is at this point, a possible dilemma.  It has passed now that I have thought about the situation logically.  The possible dilemma starts like this: I was already applying for a fellowship here at Scrantsland and an interning opportunity in Panama, and hopefully getting one.  I emailed The Doc, the same The Doc of my internship in North Carolina, last night.  I didn't ask her for my job back (I asked if she knew of any opportunities because I was planning to cast my net wide) but she offered me my job back, as well as money because she had the funding.  She also offered a position as a science writer for her website.  The possible dilemma then entered when I realized I had these three opportunities ahead of me, and which to focus on.

I said good bye to Panama.

 Panama would have been an excellent opportunity for me with PhD's with interests similar to my own, and an way to make new contacts.  There was another P I had to consider, practicality.   I am a junior in college, with the intention of going to grad school to do a thing and get something and be a scientist five-real (if you can't tell, I have no idea what I want to go to grad school for, one day I will write of my interests).  Panama is a whole summer deal, so I would not be able to visit any schools, and most likely would not be able to study for the GREs.  Plus, if I brought work back from Panama, I may be biting off more than I could chew and back burner my current research which I have busted my butt doing.  Freshmen and sophomores also have preference because they could potentially apply again and would be around longer to tell others to go.

The dilemma could arise again after I talk with my mother tonight about what she thinks (she seems to agree with me with dumping Panama).  At this point, the best case scenario is that I get the fellowship and spend part of my summer in Scranton and part in North Carolina.  Worst case scenario is that I spend my whole summer in North Carolina (and there's NOTHING wrong with that).  I may be bringing back my intern adventures but this time without the pit of despair I experienced in the beginning.  Time will tell.

UPDATE:

One of my friend's said I should apply to Panama still, and now I'm not sure what I should be doing now.  Further update after my developmental bio class.

A new year, a new blog

From the maker of Adventures in Interning (which never actually was finished), here comes Touched by science! Same wannabe scientists, slightly different topic, and all new stress!  

An actual post about my life will come later.  Here's a quick run-down about the writer:

From the North Shore of Long Island born and raised, at the University of Scranton is where she spends most of her days.  

If I wasn't so lazy, I would write my entire bio as the Fresh Prince Bel-Air theme song. 

Name: Natalia

Age: 20 (junior) 

Major: Biology (research, pre-med can "suck it") 

Height: Probably shorter than you, but taller than some. 

Weight: More than a mouse, less than a blue whale.  

Current Research Project: Carotenoid levels in retrices of a native warbler species.  

About: Am I scientist or am I delusional?  

Everything else you need to know about me will come in subsequent posts.