Catching Aquatic Insects and Surviving The Punishment Of The Greek Gods

The kind of insects we saw in the stream (click to see larger image)

Well, I probably should have broken this down into two separate post, but I was too tired. So, yesterday my class for ecology went to the local state park and we sampled the rivers for aquatic insects. Aquatic insect are insect that spend some part of their lifetime in the water.

Lets start with the beginning of the day, my lab partners didn’t finish most of their parts of the lab report so we didn’t even turn in our lab reports on time. We all hopped in the van and headed out to the state park. I have a thing about preventing un-comfortableness, so I chose to get into the van with the more, “quiet”, “calm”, or “friendly” people if you will. The good thing is that I found out in the other van, two people lit up a cigarette. Now this is ironic as hell since before we left to go on the trip we had a lecture in ecology. Our topic was climate change and even though I was slightly uncomfortable because my teacher was doing an uber-Al Gore stunt as well as praising the Obama administrations work (I kind of prefer professors not expressing their political views). Though he did make a good comment about how Al Gore really didn’t deserve the Nobel prize award. Anyways, in lecture he said that the same people working for the oil companies campaign to say climate change isn’t happening is the same people that worked for the tobacco industry to say that cigarettes aren’t addicting. I just thought it was weird to light up a damn cigarette after that lecture. Anyways, I’m just glad my instincts were right and I hopped in the more “tame” van.

The 3 main insect we have to identify (Caddis, Stonefly, and Mayfly)

When we got there we went to the river and my professor gave a mini lecture. During the lecture, three people were completely being disrespectful and talking, loudly. My friend, being more outspoken (and meaner) then me was about to tell them to shut up, so I just recommended we move away from them. Anyways, so here comes the fun part, doing sampling of the two rivers. It was fun because it was like we were being real scientist doing field research and stuff lol. I had on my rubber boots, they gave us a butterfly net (because my school is too cheap to buy the specialty nets), paper for identifying the insects and they gave us a pan. There were two streams we sampled, the inlet and outlet lakes. The inlet lake was further back in the forest so we walked the trail.  Me and my lab partners were walking behind our professor jokingly complaining about the long walk.  I said, “This is my exercise for the rest of the year”, he gave me the weird-ed out look and said thats really sad.  So, me and another lab partner got in the lake. I held the butterfly net and I put it in the water, splash the water around to stir up the insect below and hope they float into the net. Then we dump out whats in the net, which is mostly mud and my lab partner who didn’t bring any water boots, counted and identified the insects we found.

First, I’d like to say that I am surprised as hell that I was able to pick up insects, crustacean, and larvae that look like worms and stings (or bites). The only thing I was scared of is the Water Striders. Those spider-y looking things that walk on water, I caught two of them in the net. Anyways, our goal was to catch 50 insect in the inlet and outlet lakes.  We caught nothing special except for the Water Striders and some orange-y reddish looking thing that looked like larvae but had lots of tentacles…the teacher said it wasn’t anything on our list though.  The outlet lake which is more cleaner actually produced better results.  We were able to find a lot more crustaceans, dozens of Stonefly and a clear Dragonfly.  It was really fun cause we finally got to be outside on a nice day doing field work, next week we are doing a terrestrial field lab, looking at trees or something.

when we got back to the school my lab partner who still didn’t finish his part of the lab report tells me that in the van, his computer died and Word didn’t do a recovery of the document.  I don’t use Word unless I’m on the university computers, but on my netbook, since it’s Linux anyways I use OpenOffice.  OpenOffice always does a recovery for me when needed, but I’m not going to rely on the program, I’m going to save it to the computer and flashdrive.  I’m not OCD, but as you’ll find out the following is probably one of a few of my compulsive characteristics.  Though, technology dominates my life, I rarely trust it to do what I want this is especially true with applications.  I always save the same file on the computer, flash drive, Internet as attachment in e-mail, then I save that same file as a PDF and save it on my computer, flash drive…you get the point.  If any one or two things fail, since I’m a rather unlucky person, I have backups.  Now back to what I was supposed to me writing about. My friend (whos meaner then me) wasn’t there since she had to go home and pack for her vacation.  Which is good, cause I’m sure she would have ripped him a new one…whatever that means, all I know is that it wouldn’t be a pretty sight and I’m not telling her or else she’ll be complaining to me about him.  So we went to the library where he got on his laptop and I helped him half-ass answer the questions.  This guy was typing like a slow-ass, who the hell in 2009 still types 25 WPM.  Meanwhile his computer is acting really slow [Vista on new HP laptop...Ha!], in which I then proceed to convince him to switch to a Linux or somethin’ else, I don’t think I convinced him.  Anyways, then he started making these burping/coughing/alien sounds, in which I then proceed to tell him to stop it cause we don’t have time for that.  But, we eventually got done and went to the TA’s office and handed in the report.  We all talked for a while about computers and I asked about Limnology I’ll be taking next semester.

Now onto my speech FAIL. This is really sickening especially since I knew everything, it just wouldn’t come out right. My speech was on Phaedra, she married Theseus and involved in the death of Hippolytus. Well, its actually a great story but I just couldn’t tell it in front of the class. First, I know how to pronounce the name “Phaedra” but apparently I was saying it wrong through the whole speech, my teacher didn’t correct me until after the speech. I don’t even know how I was pronouncing the name but apparently I said it wrong. Next, my voice was like, “scratchy”, all I know is that my voice was not sexy.  Probably that damn ice cream I ate before class.  Next, I forgot to mention the details of the story and I forgot to mention the nurse being involved in telling Hippolytus about Phaedra love for him. The only thing I remembered well was to mention the Greek gods and goddesses, Aphrodite, Artemis, and Poseidon. So, if anything came out good it was the fact that I managed not to besmirch any of the Greek gods while making my speech.  If they are real, then I saved my ass lol.  Anyways, the whole thing that makes this worse is that I really do know this story and I have taken speech class before in high school and college, I was just nervous well, maybe I can redeem myself with the fact that my paper on Phaedra is good (I think). I’m writing this part of the post while in Greek Mythology after giving the horrible speech. I feel like curling up in a corner, so I decided thats what I’ll do when I get home, cause I decided not to go to Physics today.

btw, I’m writing this part of the post after I’ve finished curling up in the corner, I’m done as I get bored with all that sad emotion stuff.  So, on my way home, the bus driver said “have a happy resurrection day”.  I said, “ok. thanks, you too”.  I swear to god I didn’t even know what the hell she was talking about until I looked it up online.  What the hell every happened to saying “Happy Holidays” or just “Happy Easter”.  Plus I don’t think state workers are supposed to say anything associated with religion to customers, they are always supposed to say “Happy Holidays”.  I gathered she knew this since she was kind of stand-offish while saying “have a happy resurrection day”.  I have no problem with it though, I just never had someone say “happy resurrection day” to me.  I wasn’t sure if that meant something good or bad was about to happen when she said “resurrection”.  Anyways, It’s EASTER!!! on Sunday.  I never celebrated Easter for religious reasons, I only celebrated it for the candy and playing that Easter egg hunt game, which I always!!! prevailed at.  So since I’m not a state worker and if you’re in it for Jesus/God then, Happy Easter! Or if you’re an atheist or “other”?? then Happy Holidays! Or if you’re like me and don’t have a religion but don’t call yourself atheist, just don’t give a damn about this stuff except for the fact that the candy tastes good then, Happy CandyEgg Day