Had a great weekend at TRASHionals in Chattanooga this weekend. Many thanks to Rebecca for lining up a team for me and for being such a good traveling companion, and to Mike, Ahmed, and Jason for being way cool teammates. The biggest surprise: Winning the Title IX All-Star award. (I believe that Charlie and his UTC team were responsible for making this a tradition at trash-quizbowl tournaments; since so much trash QB is written and played by males, who tend to dominate the top scoring ranks, the Title IX generally goes to the top female scorer of the tournament.) However, since so much trash QB is written and played by people aged 25 and under, it’s not usually common for the Title IX to go to the oldest female player in the tournament. (Interestingly, there were a number of male players present who were considerably older than yours truly.) So, I’ll have to specifically thank TRASH for making the event so geezerette-friendly!

Today’s bugs: Lots of queen bumble bees in the periwinkle patch. Two very confused noctuid moths trapped in the family room (one since netted and freed). One ill-fated tick that picked the wrong leg (mine) to crawl on (it got its chitin fatally breached with a screwdriver handle and was then fed to my indoor free-range Crematogaster). I did miss the Camponotus queen – probably C. pennsylvanicus -- that Rick found crawling up a tree during my absence. If we knew for sure where we were going to be this summer, I’d be trying to rear a colony.