We're in Pittsburgh. Spent the day with a veryvery nice entomologist who tutored me in the ways of beetles and insect preparation. WONDERFUL. our goal for this study was to get everything down to family, he got all of our beetles down to Genus or even species. GREAT.

EXCEPT that I had already had the beetles down to family level, and the diptera-specialist is away visiting family for the holidays, so consequently the GOAL OF THIS TRIP has been void (needed somebody to help with flies and microleps).

ANDNOW there's a rather stupid kid working on this project (a grad student for the adviser of my adviser) who doesn't know jack shit about insects or taxonomy or ANYTHING, but he's part of this special grad-school program where they have deadlines for writing papers, and his advisory (the adviser of my adviser) set this deadline to six weeks from now. And of course this kid's deadline is totally more important than my life, so I'll be sent home with ALL THE WORK to rush to get everything done by the second week of January (all of which could have been done today if the fly specialist was in, but now I've got to ID a million flies).

;___________;

So basically life has not returned.

EDIT: ANOTHER upsetting thing is that this gradschool kid (who is immature and MAYBE a year older than me and hense still a kid) - is married. So he kept dropping the 'wife' bomb, and hence validating his status as a mature young man, while over dinner the advisor of my adviser made dating jokes to vombatiformes and I even though (through earlier conversation) I know that we have been together longer than this gradschoolkid and his wife. Iladjlalkdj It's just really frustrating to directly experience having my relationship for being taken less seriously because of it's queer status. ASDLKJFAKLSDJF