Starting off the New Years right

Once i was back in BCS Aubrey dropped me off at my house and I went to work packing. I pulled out the malaise traps to start patching them up. Aubrey called and said she was coming to get me so I could go to JACs party. JACs party was great as expected. Fair number of people there, had the music going, drank some beer, and talked out by the bbq. As midnight approached us nerds went to time.gov and listened to wwv to get the official midnight. We threw popcorn, did some party favors, and of course drank champaign. Most everyone left within an hour or so, JAC passed out in the yard, and so me and Julie sat around talking until Aubrey came just as Julie was going to take me home. The 3 of us stood around talking in the front yard until aubrey realized she had to take me home so she could go pick up anne and then get home and get some sleep

Monday was mostly spent packing. I woke up around 9 after going to bed at about 5. No idea what i was doing until 5 since i left cammacks at around 230 but o well, guess it was fun stareing at the wall for 2.5 hrs. I did as much packing as i could until about noon when i walked to heep. Talked to pam most of the way. the walk wasnt too bad, and i stopped at the gas station to grab a pint of milk. At heep i stopped in to tell woolley of my adventures then to get info on 301. I also coned him into giving me a ride home when he left. I then went to the office and got a little work done and organized the malaise traps. next i got the wtx samples into ethanol so i could take the jars with me. I also did a loan request for the ucr xyphon. Woolley showed up ands like unsalted saltenes are good and thens asked if I was ready to go. So i packed up all my stuff, messed wasnt with the printer for a few min, then he dropped me off at the house. I called Iana for dinner. She came and got me and we were going to go to cheplote except they were closed. So we went to panda express instead. Then walmart for batterys. I spent 50 bucks on batterys, how sad is that? Then my favorite romanian took me home. I called cammack and begged him to come pick me up and take me to heep so i could pick up some other stuff and also to let me borrow a back up headlamp since my 2 backups were still in the truck whcih was currently on its way between sf and tx. It took them 4 hrs to go 90 miles to santa rosa. So julie and cammack came and we went to heep where i stold a net handle, a small aquarium net, and some other random stuff. Then back to the house to use cammacks duct tape since mine was already packed to fix one of my bags. The Aubrey came and got me and the two of us plus jones left for houston. The drive was uneventful and we got to her house at about 1am. Her mom had steak, beans, and cottage cheese for us so that was my 2nd dinner. It was quite yummy. Then after a bit I went to bed where I could actually hit wireless and play on the computer, where I am typing this now.

Orange County- not the one you see on the show, but rather the one where you occasionally wonder if your going to get killed in drive by

We left for California on Saturday. I decided to leave my truck in Santa Fe to save some gas money. I slept a good chunk of the drive. We went the northern route. The worst part though was that eddies muon detector kept pulling too much power off the inverter which would trip the warning buzzar. This lasted for 3 hrs by which point I was ready to pull the inverter out of the cigarettee lighter and throw it out the window. I kept asking why didnt he run 2 inverters- one for the laptop and one for the dector. But come on what would a dumb Ag. major know about electrons? So they ignored my suggestions. By the time we stopped for lunch I was about ready to request to continue the journy as a hood ordiment just to be away from the beeping. I suggesed for the tenth time using both inverters and I guess just to make me drop it they tried it after both dad and eddie said it wouldn't work. Well the silence was deafening after they tried my suggestion. So what does a dumb ag major know about electronics? Apparently more than a double e and a physics freak. Figures. The rest of the drive was pretty easy, although the FedEx guy we were had been following for most of the trip lost control of his rig and flipped a mile or two infront of us. Hopefully hes ok. We rolled into Cali pretty late, and stood by the fire attempting to get warm. We unloaded a bit then went to bed. The 24th was spent doing last miniute (or really 1st minuet since its when we did all of it) shopping. Of course we went to Barnes and Nobel for our traditional book exchange. This year we basicly picked out what we wanted and bought it for eachother. After that we went to Linens and things where eddie discovered his new favorite toy- a salad spinner. If we hadn't have already bought him Wikinomics I think he would have gotten that for christmas. Hes one strange kid. Back in Anaheim we unloaded the van and then Dad and I headed out to riverside to meet up with Herady. We only got lost once on the way out there- the directions I got from yahoo told me to get of on a street that didn't have an exit. O well, we made it to Herady's house. Met his wife then went to UCR to see the collection. The campus is pretty cool looking, with orange groves all over, orange groves remind me of falbrook when i was a kid. We went into the building that houses collections, it apparently has an alarm on it when you actually enter the collection room. There wasn't anyone there so it was armed when we entered and the countdown began. Herady entered his code a couple times but no luck and the alarm went off. For some reason i wasn't suprised at all. So he called campus police and told them it was him and not to send the police. Glad we don't have one of those on our collection, i think it would get set of daily. They have compactors like INHS does, but UCRs are hand moved. We opened up the leafhopper section and I looked for my genus. No Xyphon, but after a bit of searching found them under Carneocephala. They have 6 of the 8 species in my group. I then poked around in the undetermined stuff and found some Xyphon determined by Chris. Some of the labels were Timberlake labels- the only person that woolley knows who has worse writing than i do. Infact Woolley was conserned about me going to UCR, seeing this guys writing and realizing I could make mine even more illegible and set that as a goal. Then Herady decided that my dad needed an introduction to real bugs showed him some parasitoids. There was a poster that had them large and acutal size so we started there then moved onto some actual specimens. As I told dad at least you can see my bugs and not get them confused with dust particles. Next we walked over to the new ento building and toured the Herady Lab. I aquired a new bumper sticker- it has a Fulgorid on it and says UCR, they had found some in a box somewhere and Herady had one by his door, which promptly became mine. Dad got to see more wasps including some Euchardids. He thought those were pretty cool (I have to admit to liking them too, probably because JAC (Cammack) and I use to catch them at light on dominica). Maria called at one point to say theyd found Alaskan Amber at the grocery store and did I want that or Shiner. I told them go for the Amber, but Herady didnt realize we were talking about beer (what kind of Hymenopterist doesnt recognize beer talk when they hear it) and said Alaskan Amber is worthless cause it doesnt have any chalcidoids in it. I looked at him funny and said i hope there are no chalcidoids in my beer and he realized we were discussing beer not fossils. Rather funny. I got to see a picture of Woolley's major prof who apparently had a teacup Chichuahua named Frankinstein aka Frankie that use to come to class and sit in the prof's coat pocket (this was the motivation for Woolley's christmas present last year from JAC and I). On the way back to Heradys house we stopped at a shop so he could pick up a christmas present. After we took him home dad and I headed back to Anaheim. We went to Christmas Mass, pretty low key as usual. Then went home and watched TV. Christmas was prety low key, we didn't even open presents until almost noon. I got a desk lamp (nice and bright and very exciting because I hate dim lights), a far side calender, a book about the theory behind how to color maps, a power converter for other countries, and best of all a GPS. The rest of the time in California was spent seeing a few relatives and going to the beach- always a cold afair. Me and eddie had fun with the sea gulls. Hed pick one he wanted a picture of and id engineer a flush so he could get a picture in flight. Some of them turned out really cool looking.

So you though I was joking about possibly not making it back in time for graduation?

Friday I went into the lab and spent most of the morning making copies of lit to take back to texas. Cammack had to turn in my tuition rebate form so I talked him through the signature foraging and form filling out while making copies. My flight was suppose to leave around noon so chris said wed leave about an hour before then. After making copies I looked at bugs and spent some time just digging through the collection. Dani came in shortly before I left and I got some reprints from her. So between those, all the books and other lit I'd gotten from Chris I had to do some serious rearranging of my luggage. Then I had to load up the specimens I'd gotten on loan and fit those into my backpack also. Chris helped me carry all my stuff into the airport then left for a retirement lunch. I had Dani's number incase I had trouble getting the pinned material through security. I checked in and found out my plane was running 30 min late. No big deal since I had a 2 hr layover in chicago before catching a flight to dallas. Security was closed so I grabbed lunch (a brautwust) and watched the news until security finally opened. I made it through with no problems and found a seat at my gate. This airport is bigger than the college station airport but not by much. There was an announcement saying the plane was now an hour late and that someone would be avilable to assist us shortly. Well I sat around and noone appeared. Another 30 min passed and another announcement, this time saying it was now 2 hrs late and someone would be coming at assist. I called my parents and told them things might get a bit interesting and maybe they should leave a truck for me in dallas incase i couln't fly to college station. After waiting for the desk person for a while I gave up and took a nap. When I woke up I called Woolley to tell him my quest was successful and Cammack to just see what was up and tell him my plane might be running way late. I dozed back off to sleep and when I awoke there was actually someone at the desk. Only an hour so so after they said there would be someone. So I went up to the counter and asked the status of my connecting flights. The guy said my flight to dallas was running 30 min late so I should make the connection. Apparently the radar at O'hare was down and thats what was causing the delays. They called us for boarding and I gathered all my gear and got on the plane. I was still rather concerned about the connection since it was going to be pretty tight. If i missed the flight to dallas then I would miss the last flight to college station also. Not good since I had a meeting with the secretary of defense at 9am the next morning. I called my parents and cammack to tell them i was leaving Urbana, so there was at least a hope of me getting to A&M. The flight was uneventful, rested up for what I figured would be a pretty stressful fight to get on the dfw bound plane. The flight attendant came by shortly before landing and I found out what gate my connecting flight was out of. I looked it up and it was quite far from where we were landing. As soon as we touched down I called my mom to check the status of the connecting flight. It was suppose to be leaving in 15 min. Getting off the plane took a while since I was near the back and people were moving super slow. I tried to push past as many as possible but not much luck. I was practically bouncing off the walls trying to get out. I made it into the terminal and started running in what I hoped was the right dirrection. I had a couple boxes of bugs on loan so I was trying to run gently in hopes of not knocking them off their points. I checked the status as I ran by a monitor and I had 5 min before it was suppose to leave. I kept running, narrowly avoiding hitting old ladies or strolleres. They do get in the way though. I ran over to a counter and asked if they could call the other terminal or something to let them know i was on my way but she said she had a plane to start boarding so no. Nice. I kept running. Just as I though I was going to die I saw the sign for the terminal I needed to be in. Of course my gate was almost the entire way down the terminal. I looked at my watch and I was out of time. I sprinted up to the gate and saw a huge crowd of people. Good i thought theyre just boarding now. So I asked a guy if this was the flight to Dallas and he said nope, its boarded this is for the next flight out. At this point I was freaking out and ran up to the counter. I handed the ticket person my boarding pass just as they were paging Therese Catanach, final call we're closing the doors. So I guess I had about 3 seconds to spare- plenty of time. So I called the parents and Cammack to tell them I was on the plane, not much telling really, mostly just panting. Guess I need to run more. I slept most of the flight down to dallas, then read a couple of the articles Dani had given me. Since we were running a bit late out of Chicago I figured i wouldn't have a very long layover in dallas but that I should have plenty of time to go between flights. Honestly, even 30 min would seem like eternity compared to O'Hare. Plus I know that airport a little better. Landed, rode the skytram or whatever over to my next gate, and walked leasurely down the terminal. As I approached my gate I wondered if Andrea had made it back ok. I looked up and low and behold Andrea was at the gate. Odd since she was suppose to get back to A&M a few hrs before me. Turns out her flight had gotten canceled after the piolet didnt show up. There were a bunch of people stuck hoping to get onto my flight. She said a group of people were trying to get down for graduation so had rented a van together and were going to drive down. My plane was running a bit late, and they kept changing gates. We must have walked between the 3 or so gates 6 times before they finally picked the right one and let us board. It didnt look like Andrea was going to get on since she was number 6 on the stand by list. The flight down to college station was fast and pretty uneventful. I sat next to a guy who was coming back from antartica. Hed spent the last 40 hrs or something like that on planes or boats trying to get home. We landed and I gathered up my checked bags. Maria and Eddie picked me up and we drove by Heep so I could drop off my bugs. We met up at Ozonas for dinner. They had just gotten into town. Dinner was great and it was nice to be back in sweet home college station drinking a shiner. I actually looked up the shiner distribution map and discovered that mishigan would be the closest place to urbana to get shiner. Have to buy it in bulk i guess. After dinner I went back to the house to get ready for the actual graduation. I had to get my hat ready. During Aubrey and Mikas graduation I had had this idea to put an entire 301 insect collection on my hat. So I had my work cut out for me. Luckily I have tons of mounted specimens to choose from that I had prepared over the last 3 years. I started by finding 2 clean A trays and then pulled out the sorted and labeled drawers. I went through and picked the smallest bugs from the various families. After thinking about it a bit more I decided to try and limit it to as few orders as possible since the ordinal pen and label took up additional space. After some trial and error I managed to get enough Hemiptera, Coleoptera, Neuroptera, Hymenotptera, and Diptera onto my hat to have a complete collection. It was in phylogenetic order (oviously) and all the specimens were in decent condition. I scored it and assuming I got no deductions for the fact that one of the beetles was missing an elytra it would be exactly 100 (including extra credits from when I took it). I was quite proud. I then glued a mailer onto the hat and put the 2 A-trays in the mailer and put the cover over it. By now it was close to 2 am and time to get some sleep.

Conference- aka being paid to go hang out with 1,000 people just like me

I spent the last week up north in Illinois and Indiana. The days leading up to that were pretty crazy, i took 4 finals in about 18 hrs. Before starting that I was trying to study, finish up the IDs and get ready for the meeting. We did have dinner gatherings- the first night Maria and I went over to Daisy and Stevens for supper and some Super Smash Brothers fun. Daisy cooked cornish game hens which were excellent. Next they came over to our house for dinner, Maria cooked Pork Roast. Then we went back over to their house for supoer smash brothers a couple nights later. The finals went ok, it was nice to get them over with although I was running back and forth constantly. I took one at A&M then ran to Blinn and took another one. The next day I took one at Blinn at about 8 then took my last one at A&M a couple hrs later. Between the two was a feverish packing attempt at 2am and clearing leafhopper genitilia. Cammack's laptop broke so we took it apart and tried to pull files off of it with no luck. After taking all my finals it was back to the lab and trying to get bugs packed up to take to Illinois. I pulled the genitilia out of the KOH (caustic, used to disolve nonscleritized tissue) and put it in the microvials. Only issue was that I didnt have any and Oz and Ed were already in route to ESA. I got into Eds office and dug around but for the life of me couldnt find the stuff so I grabbed the vials from Ozs stash and tried mostly unsuccessfully to get glicyerin in them without a syringe. Eventually I got enough made to pack up the ones i needed and finished preparing the specimens. I also talked to Teal, im offiically TAing 311 next semester. Cammack and I went and grabbed lunch at Ag Cafe before he took me to the airport. On arrivial I realized I didnt have my checkbook, so cammack dropped me off and went to get it. I checked in and sat around for a bit unti Cammack pulled back up with my checkbook. I went up to security and they made me go through a couple times then searched my backpack. They finally found my epi pen and they decided that that was what set it off. As they were pulling everything out I told the guy to be careful with the box since it was fragile, so he took it out all carefully then proceeded to shake it. Nothing rattled and so he wrapped it back up without opening it and handed it back to me to put away in my backpack. Luckily the bugs were ok. Once I was at the gate Cammack called to make sure he could leave (I needed him to wait and make sure my bugs got through). My plane was a few min late but not too bad. On the plane to DFW I took a short nap since the flights less than an hour long. Once in dallas I found the business lounge deal and pulled out my laptop. It was time to start working on my presentation. I was there for a couple hrs waiting on the next flight which was running a bit late. I slept a bit more on the plane then did somemore work on the presentation. Id been sick all week and that last part of the plane was torture. I was pretty sure that my ears were going to explode but I landed in Champaign without anything rupturing. The airport was a bit bigger than the one at A&M but not substantially. I made my way down to the lobby and met up with Chris. Apparently preparing your presentation on the plane is more the norm than exception since when i told chris i was concerned about it he told me get use to it, it doesnt get any better. Not exactly what i was expecting based off the profs im around at A&M but definatly more my style. Grabbed my bag and went outside. It was insanely cold, and i left my gloves and hoodie in college station. Must have been in the 20s or so, with some ice on the ground. On the way to Chris's house I got to see a good chunk of Champaign, looks like a nice town. Very similar to A&M although a lot more brick. The building the survey is in is kinda cool, the biology side of it is in champaign while the geology side of it is in urbana. Theres a 31 flavors and mcdonalds, thats all i need in life. The houses were so different looking, they were square, no brick and with porches (either inclosed or not). They just looked cold. We got to Chris's house and I stuck all my stuff upstairs then met his wife, susan, and daughter claire. We ate some soup, nice and warm, then talked leafhoppers for a bit. I pulled out my B-tray of bugs from Dominica and gave those to him so we could ID them when we got back from ESA. Went to bed pretty early since we needed to be on the road by 430 to get to ECN on time.

Saturday started at 420 when Chris woke me up. I grabbed my stuff and we went to Jamies house. Jamie appeared a few min later and said he needed finish packing. After a few min he came down and we were back on the road to Dimetrivs. Dimetriv was ready so he loaded up and it was off to Indianapolis. I was asleep again pretty much instantly and didnt wake up until we were approaching Indianapolis. We found their hotel- right by this staduim that was being built, there must have been 30 cranes working on it, definatly exciting. We walked over to the Hotel where the ECN meeting was being held. The morning presentations were interesting, they were almost all relating to computerizing collections either by databasing (done by Ed), online librarys (by Oz) or online interactive keys (Dimetriv). There were also a couple about projects being undertaken at various collections and that sort of thing. Dani showed up a bit after we did and for lunch we all went to the mall, along with Ed, Cheryl Barr, Dave Furth, and a couple others. The most exciting part was that Dave Furth (smisonian guy) remembered me from last meeting, and Cheryl knew me from my Abachrysa e-mails. The afternoon presentations were also pretty good, then I met up with Lois and talked to her some about the papers I'm working on. There was a dinner social at the hotel, sat with an eclectic group- the grad students from chris's lab plus the new curator at AK Fairbanks, a lep systemitist, and some beetle people. After dinner finished up my presentation- it came together pretty nice I think then went to the hotel bar where most of the grad students went. We were all pretty exhasted though so I think we left around 10. One of the guys from NC state had a van and since they were staying at the holiday inn they gave me and Jamie a ride back there to pick up my stuff then they dropped me off at the Hyatt where I was staying for the 1st night. I checked in and found my room on the 14th story. I love tall buildings. Andrea wasn’t there yet so I messed with my presentation for a bit longer by which point she had arrived. After talking for a while we called it a night since I had to be at the convention center at 630 to do my volunteer hours.

610 came way too early and I made my way to the convention center. Indianapolis is kinda cool in that a lot of the stuff downtown is connected by enclosed raised passages so you don’t have to go out into the cold. I was working the presentation preview room like last year, but rather than having to deal with presenters who didn’t know how to upload their presentations or who were waiting until the last possible moment to do so. Instead I got to sit at the table, look official and hand out stuff for moderators. I even got to hang onto a walktakie to contact Grayson incase there were major issues and he wasn’t around. It was quite nice. Then ever 45 min or so I would walk down to the wireless internet room and make sure only ESA people were using it. Pretty easy job. Presenters would come in and look at me so id point them to a computer then be like if you have any trouble one of these people would be happy to help you. It was exquisite as my favorite Romanian would say. At 7am I went and got my registration packet and the 5 of us volunteers discovered that there was a scavenger hunt to win a prize. It was finding various types of people like worked in CA entomology, or someone from a different branch than you were. Well being in the preview room we had a lot of options to get signatures. I decided to wait on the governing board so it would be an excuse to harass heraty. After finishing up in the projection room I ran into David and we went to lunch with Dr. Harris and Robert. Had the best but most overpriced burger I’ve had in a while. Went to a few presentations then back to the hotel for a bit to figure out the plan for the night. I was suppose to go to the Embassy Sweets, but I couldn’t get ahold of Jill or the other girls. Also I kinda wanted to stay where I was until after the presentation since it was closer and quieter than the student hotel was. The 1st real even was the plenary session. I ran into heraty on my way over there, and figured he knew where he was going being on the governing board and all. Well he didn’t, but we eventually got there. I was early so I left again and wandered around alittle. I ran into Norm Penny a neuropterist who was talking with Lois and Charlie. Lois and Charlie went to eat and Norm and I went to the plenary session. After the first business meeting the speaker started his presentation. It was on Wigglesworth, an insect physiologist. It was pretty interesting, just wish all insect phys was as cool. One of his experiments involved writing his initials in juvenile hormone on a plant bugs abdomen to see if it would change the make up of the cuticle (which it did). So his initials were written in juvenile cuticle while the rest of the bug was adult. Next was the reception for everyone at esa. Found some food and a place to sit with lois and dani. Then it was time to wander the room. I needed to find Heraty to get the scavenger hunt form signed and Alma to ask her some questions on collecting in mexico. Finding people was virtually impossible you could see someone you needed to talk to and by the time you fought through the crowd they were gone. I ran into Demetiv and talked to him for a while. Then it was back to looking for Heraty and Alma. Eventually I found Heraty. He introduced me to some people and signed my paper. I realized I was going to be in LA over Christmas and that it might be nice to go out to riverside. I told him and got his e-mail address and phone numbers. I handed him back his pen but didn’t have his pen cap. Turned out he didn’t either. After both of us taking all the stuff out of all our pockets and still not finding it I finally spotted it on the floor a few feet away. As to how it got there no idea. I wandered off after a while and found Michelle and a few of the other A&M grad students. Talked to them then saw Alma. We apparently spotted eachother at the same time so I didn’t even have to chase her down. I like this whole 2nd conference recognition thing, makes life so much easier. She thinks mexico should be workable, need to find someone with a collecting permit then just get on theirs as a collaborator. Hopefully I should be able to find someone without too much trouble. Cammack and I have been talking about collecting down in Tamalipas for a couple years. Julio had told me about Rancho del Cielo, the northernmost cloudforest and since then I’ve been trying to figure out how to get down there. Alma and I parted ways and I went back to talking to the grad students. Then I saw ed talking to a bunch of beetle guys so I went over there and after a while Ed, one of the curators at BYU, and I decided we needed to get some more substantial food. We tried a bunch of different places which were all closed or no longer serving food. Finally someone said the steak and shake was still open so the 3 of us went there for dinner. It was a nice dinner listening to collecting stories and occasionally getting to add one of my own. Seems like everyone has a getting horribly lost in the woods and and dang I wish I had a flashlight story. The best lost story I've ever heard was a guy who got lost in the woods and ended up curling up in a malaise trap for the night. After dinner I walked back to the hotel with some other people staying there and went up to my room. Amanda (one of Andreas friends from randys lab) was staying in the Hyatt with us and so I met her. She works on leafhoppers also, looking at glasswing sharpshooter behavior. We were both presenting in the morning so we ran through the talks once each then called it a night. I slept on the floor in a sea of pillows and blankets.

I dont get why people dont belive me when I say I sleep on the floor. Been doing it nightly since high school and even before anytime i could id sleep on the ground somewhere. I think its because when I was really young my parents would have me sleep on the couch when we went up to the cabin. They would then surround the couch with chairs until I was totally barricaded in. I got so use to being barricaded that I guess i just figured i needed to be contained. For most of my life i've been afraid of beds since i figure ill fall out and theyre not containing enough. When I was 7 or 8 i got a loft bed which had rails on all sides so that was nice and containing. After the move to TX i stayed in the loft bed until one day we took the sheets off to get washed and i never put them back on, just started sleeping on a pile of blankets on the floor. Much more confortable, and I've never gone back.