more conference

I woke up bright and early to take my phys test. According to the girls i was staying with behmer might be running a little late since they left the bar at 3 and he was still there. Sure enough, no behmer. Waited a while then called him around 830. No answer. Medina came by and said if he saw him hed tell him i had been diligently studying all morning. Behmer called me at 9 and said hed be another hr so i went to some presentations before taking my final at about 11. After the final I went to lunch with Jamie and Dani. We went to the mall as usual. Talked bugs a bit (shocking I know). Turns out Dani was the one that changed the name of the glassy wing sharpshooter. She gave me a reprint so I'll have to read it to let Amanda know what was going on. It was a priority issue as expected. Gotta love priority. After lunch I pretty much went to talks, played on the internet and toured the exhibit hall again. There were the finals for the linnean games so I went to that. Its amazing how obscure some of those questiosn are seriously who knows this stuff? After that was the awards ceremony- Jamie won the systematics poster session so that was exciting. After the awards was the student mixer. I went for a bit- ate some food, drank some beer, and talked to a bunch of A&M people along wtih some old Ags. Me and Andrea then decided to head to the International Soceity of Hymenopterists Meeting. Even though I dont really work on hymenoptera those guys are usually funny as hell so i figured id go to the meeting. Andrea decided as we were walking out to go to the biocontrol mixer instead so i went to the ISH meeting by myself. I got there just as the business meeting started so that part was rather unexciting. After it was finished i said hi to Heraty then went to talk to Kajia from Morphbank to set up a time to meet and go over some data stuff. She was talking to someone else so i waited around for a bit. She ended up following Heraty out, still talking to the person so i just went along also. I started talking to Heraty and when we got to the lobby for the Hyett hes like yall want to come up for drinks? So the 4 of us went up to his room. Kajia went to go get more glasses from her room while the other guy, Micahal Gates and I went with Heraty. Heraty introduced us and told Gates i was woolley's newest victem. Gates poured us drinks- he and i finished off what was left of the scotch while heraty broke into the wild turkey. Heraty pulled up his comptuer ands like the real reason to come was cause were nerds and he was going to show us his presentation from another meeting. He opened up a file and said hed hit the high points. It was about Eucharidids- specifically the ones wtih spines that people though were used to carry them around by ants. He acutally had a video of ants picking up the bugs and moving them around. It was pretty cool. Kajia showed back up with a glass and Heraty offered her her choice between scotch and wild turkey not reallizing the scotch was gone so she got her choice between wild turkey and wild turkey. Since we really are all nerds we talked mainly about morphbank and MX vs 3i (all programs used in ento). After while Gates said that a bunch of guys were over at this bar down the street so him, Kajia, and I went over there. I met Jim Carpenter along with a few other hymenopterists. Turns out some of the Illinois people were over there too, Jamie came over to say hi. There was also a curator from some collection that sat with us. He plays the harmonica and talked about that for quite a while. Apparently harmonicas are rather difficult to play correctly, so he was telling us about that. Apparently Hymenoptera and music go hand in hand since everyone there was talking music- either instruments or sound systems/albums. Never would have guessed such a lowly order would have such cultured workers (we like to trade insults between workers in the various orders).

I actually slept in a few min on wensday instead of being up at the crack of dawn. I had actually planned on being up early, but plans change quickly at these meetings. So instead i got up, packed my stuff then checked out. I carried my stuff over to Hyett then checked it into the luggage room there. They didnt seem concerned that I didnt actually stay there the night before or maybe the just didnt notice. Either way I was excited. I went to a couple presentations before it was lunch time. The plan was for all the Auchenorrhynca people to go to lunch together, but Dmetiv had gone into the exhibit hall and everyone else left while chris, jamie, and I went to find him. After wandering the exhibit hall we found him and in the process heard about a mexican place Jamie had found last night and wanted to try. He wasnt quite sure where it was but thought it was behind a hotel. We decided to try and find it and went of in that direction. After walking a bit in the direction he thought it was Jamie decided he actually didn't know where it was so we went back to Alcatraz for lunch with the rest of the group . Walking in we ran into Randy and Andrea, but they were giving up on the wait and going somewhere else. We went in and while we waited Dmetriv took a group picture. They found a big table to stick us at and we ordered. I got fish and chips. I was talking about Dominica when the guy across from me said his nephew went to dominca last year also. Turns out i was sitting with karls uncle whos a dipterist. Small world. After lunch it was time for the last of the presentations including the auchenorrhynca ones. So we all headed back for those which were quite good. Most of it was more higher level phylogonys. After these were over I went and grabbed my stuff then we walked to the car. I took a picture of a factory and the cranes. Chris though that was amusing, but what can i say I like old factories and i have a thing for cranes- the bigger the better. I think me, jamie, and Dmetiv all fell asleep for part of the drive home, and i woke up to hear that chris had found a genus for me- Xyphon. There was also a second genus that was possible to, but Xyphon was more promissing. Its fairly small but is monophyletic and looks like it has potential. Back in Urbana we dropped off Jamie and Dmetiv then headed to the house. We unloaded our stuff then chris ordered a couple pizzas. I apparently got his daughter sick before we left for the meeting. Chris went to get the pizza and some beer while i played around on the internet- found some random wireless signal to grab onto i love people who dont secure their wireless points. After dinner Chris and I went to the lab. He got me set up in the working lab wiht a scope and I looked at some material he had ided earlier from the potential genera. We left around 10, went home and watched the Daily Show. After that Chris went to bed and I watched the Colbert Report before going up to my room. Got online and talked to JAC for a while then went to sleep.