I´m here!

Laura and I arrived in San Jose a couple hours ago, after a relatively short plane ride (only 5 hours total). Now it´s chillaxing time until tomorrow I think when we go out on the town for the day. We require locks for a locker to keep our shit in, and well...all other things we forgot at home. The hostel is pretty sweet...it´s going to be pretty happenin´on New Years eve. Don´t worry mom...they don´t let anyone in that isn´t staying here and the area is very controlled. Let the revelling begin!

no more buggin' out

I spent approx. 2 days at home before heading to Portland. Of those two days I spent about 10 hours finishing my goddamned bug collection. I had probably spent over 100 hours working on it already, no joke. So my family had to be displaced by hornets, butterflies, and beetles. They were not pleased. Since I worked so hard on it I figured I had to show everyone what the deal was. Behold:

This kinda shitty picture shows the box with the Orders Hymenoptera(Bees, Wasps, Ants, Sawflies), Coleoptera(Beetles), and Diptera(True Flies). All of the tiny top labels include: State, county, location vouchered, initials of surveyor, date vouchered, substrate the insect was found on, method of collection, latitude and longitude of collection site, and elevation of collection site. Whew! The second label includes identification down to species if possible, initials of IDer, and date determined. It took a long ass time.
This box included the Orthopterans and Hemipterans...it was the lonelier box. It took me a long time to glue back on all the legs and antennae that blew off at different points in the semester.
Here's another shot of the first box. Unfortunately I didn't take pictures of the boxes containing Odonates(dragonflies, damselflies) and lepidopterans(butterflies, moths) because they were in glassine envelopes and I didn't want to move them any more than I had to. I also had a box of wet mounted species, mostly Hemipterans, though I did have fleas, mayflies, and a termite. Yay! Anyway...I am no longer at risk of a heart attack and will shortly be flying to Costa Rica, where I hope to chase Morphos and Rhino beetles.

My favorite....

boxes boxes boxes

Lately I've been feeling pretty trapped in my major. Completely boxed in. This entire semester, really, I've felt uninspired by everything I've been learning. So much work is being dumped on me I've kind of lost touch of what was so beautiful about my major in the first place. I was peeing my pants when I first got here...I couldn't get enough of my classes. Now I just feel isolated from every other interest I ever had before I became a science major. What else am I made of? I couldn't tell you. I used to make art, act, make music, read novels, write poetry. I guess hanging out with people from that end of the spectrum recently has made me realize how disconnected I've become from my creative side and how atrophied it's become. I didn't think it had, but I'm grateful I've realized it and can now try to do something about it. It does make me feel a bit like I have a slight handicap when I hang out with that new crowd, though. It's like everything creative is so dusty and crammed in boxes on the sides of my cranium. Art nights have kind of sustained me up until now, but I think I need a bit more.

catastrophe looms

I had a weird dream the other night. I was leaving a building (my dorm maybe, I'm not really sure). I was following a friend (male I think, but who it was I don't remember). It was someone I wanted to be close to, someone I maybe wasn't close to already. As I approached the doorway he turned and looked at me, telling me to hurry up. He was shocked as I grew faint. My field of vision tightened along with a numbing pressure in my head, like a tightly knit nylon had been pulled over my face. I cried out their name (don't remember) and felt myself to begin to slump to the floor. Then I woke up.
I looked online at 6 or 7 dream dictionaries, and they all told me that I needed to change my lifestyle if I didn't want to end up in a bad predicament. Hmm...so I think I'll stop eating tofu, and going to the gym, and getting fresh air. I'll even stop doing my daily crossword puzzle. That should do it.
In other news...my cards today said I should be happy about the fact that I have made new friends (which I actually have been doing) and not to feel like time is too limited (which it might be) because they're meeting up with me for a reason. I knew it!

velcro?

My sister, Chris Stevens, and I had a rather interesting conversation last night. Assume that we have multiple lives (I think we do), and assume we meet up with a lot of the same souls in our multiple lives (it seems like the trend...you know when you've met someone before)....what exactly is it that keeps us meeting up with these same souls? What binds them together? What would make them skip one life with you and meet you in the next? Is it some sort of energetic connection? Some sort of lock and key mechanism? A catalyst that holds you with these people through time (whatever that is)? I'm not sure...not that I really even know what our souls are anyway. Maybe if I knew what they were I could tell how they connect and lock together. Whatever it is, even if that's not exactly how it works, feeling like you've known someone for as long as your "being" has been around is a beautiful thing. Maybe that's what the true concept of soul mates is. It's not one person....its many.