One more dead flower post

After weeks of obsessing over the corpse flower, it was time for it to be repotted and returned into the museum greenhouse. The museum had a lottery and chose 25 people to come to an event where they'd do the repotting. I got lucky and was selected.

When Erin at the museum sent the email informing me I'd been picked, she included instructions and a line about how they'd be filming a documentary.

If I'd written this three weeks ago when the repotting took place, it would be full of details and maybe some pictures. Right now I'm lazy and time made it seem less important. Plus, no one reads this blog anyway :)

But what is important is that Erin asked if I'd mind being interviewed for the documentary. Of course I said yes, even though I was sure I'd say something extremely stupid or do the dolphin laugh. I'm sure I did both.

When I told the girls I'd done the interview, Kristen said "you're going to be nerd famous" and I still laugh at it.

Zac, Lois' horticulturist buddy, is having a lecture on Wednesday and they'll be selling the documentary then. I'll be at the Outback with my family but I guess I should get my hands on a copy.

The Nerdiest Thing I've Ever Done

I knew I choose the right title for this blog. It's been like three weeks since I told you about the corpse flower. Here's the rest of the story:

I've already admitted that I met most of my friends on the internet a few years ago, so this has to be pretty nerdy huh?

I followed the Lois saga on Twitter and on Houston Museum of Natural Science website. They had a webcam on Lois 24 hours a day. In the pane next to the webcam they showed the tweets about her. Tweets containing #corpseflower were automatically filtered onto the page. There were tons of people talking about Lois but several hundred people were around day after day (and night after night). The little picture icons next to people's names helped people become familiar faces.

While I was waiting in line to see Lois with my friend Kasey, I checked Twitter on my Blackberry and saw this:

I followed the link to Facebook and learned they were going to have a get together for 200 Tweeters to meet each other and the people at the museum who we'd been following online. They also would reveal who had been posting hilarious tweets as Lois (http://twitter.com/CorpzFlowrLois). I immediately sent in an email requesting an invite. I heard back from Erin at HMNS that I was on the list.

The Tweetup (that word still makes me giggle) started at midnight at the museum on Saturday. I haven't gone out at midnight since I was in college (and bars closed at one when I was at A&M so we usually were out way before that). I stayed up really late on Friday so I could sleep in and be ready for a midnight outing on Saturday.

I got to the museum about 11:15 since I had no idea what kind of line or check-in process they were going to have. I lucked out at got a parking spot right in front of the museum. And then I got heckled.

IN FRONT OF A MUSEUM!

Some guys rolled down their window to inform me that it was "just a fucking flower!" It cracks me up now, but at the time,  I was very "WTF just happened?"

The event was held outside the museum next to the Butterfly Center. It was a very neat setup. They gave each of us a ticket to see Lois again and a drink ticket. SCORE! Outside they had some tables out and a bar set up.  And that's when I realized I had left my wallet on the kitchen counter. Boo. Luckily the bartender knows how to fill up a glass of wine:

They had three projectors set up showing stuff on the wall of the musem. One was showing all the #corpseflower tweets. People who were not in Houston or who were unable to go asked all of us attending to keep them updated.  No pressure to be entertaining or anything to them or the people attending! I did use it as a way to find someone I'd been tweeting with for weeks though. @stephsparkle was standing right behind me! Turns out she's an Aggie too!

The middle one showed some selected Lois tweets from the previous few days. And I totally geeked out when I saw one of mine. I didn't have my camera or phone out, so I had to wait for it to roll around again. Then I got a picture with my phone. )It's fuzzy because it's projected on the outside of the building and it's not a completely white, clean building.)

Here's a screen capture of it:

One of Stephanie's came up too so we had to wait for hers to come around again.

The third projector was showing info about Culture Map, a website I had started following on Twitter about the time I learned about Lois. It is a great source of info on all things Houston. And it turns out that @CorpzFlowrLois was a staffer at Culture Map so it all came together nicely.

Sprinkles was there with cupcakes. I am not much of a cake eater so I skipped those.

I got to meet Erin from HMNS that does all of their social media stuff. I'm sure she has a spiffy title, but I don't know what it is. However, what an awesome job! I would love to be on Twitter and Facebook and get paid for it. (Let's not mention that I'm at my desk typing this and I'm on and off FB/Twitter all day at work). I am sure she was extremely exhausted but she was super nice and talked with us for a while about the museum and how they would be having more tweetups and their Flickr group (which I joined since she said they have special events for people in the group to photograph things after hours).

And I met Mary Benton (she's on Channel 2 news in Houston). She had been reporting about Lois but was also a big fan and tweeted along with us.

Everyone involved in the whole Lois phenomenon was so nice and helpful. If someone tweeted a question, 10 people answered. It was a really neat thing to be a part of ...even if it was extremely nerdy to go meet a bunch of people that I'd met tweeting about a flower.

This is a really long blog post about a flower that smells like death

You know how you get swept up in something and you don't even know how it started? That's pretty much what happened with me and Lois, the corpse flower. I know a couple of weeks ago I saw or read a story about the Houston Museum of Natural Science having a corpse flower that was beginning to bloom. And the next thing I know, it's been two weeks and I've spent a couple hundred hours in front of my computer watching a webcam of a flower.
 
To be fair, it wasn't as much as the flower blooming in super-slow-mo that kept me watching. It was the tweets being broadcast to the side of the webcam. It combined people watching with tweeting. How awesome is that? And took me from about 100 tweets on July 1 to the 628 I have now. I'd say at least 450 of those were about the corpse flower.
 
Originally, the museum estimated it would take a couple days to bloom. They started staying open 24 hours a day so everyone that wanted to could see her. I absolutely love the museum and think it's awesome they were willing to work so hard to accommodate everyone in Houston (and the people that came from even further!). When the webcam went live, the name of the page was "Our Corpse Flower "Lois" is Blooming!" and it kept saying that and no bloom! So I jokingly tweeted that the museum should rename the page to "Our Corpse Flower 'Lois' Might Bloom in the Next Decade." And then did! At least for a few minutes until I could get a screen shot. Hilarious!

I also took the time out of my oh-so-busy schedule (I couldn't even type that with a straight face) to draw a picture. I have made similar pictures for some friends regarding events and stories going on with us, but that's another story.

The museum retweeted the picture and I'm not going to lie, it pretty much made my day!

I wanted to see the flower but not until it had released it's pungent corpse-like smell. (That's a phrase I don't think I'll ever use again.) Lucily for me and a couple thousand others, the museum put up a Stink-O-Meter so we could track her smell. Lois peaked in nastiness on Friday morning so we headed to HMNS on Friday evening to wait in line to smell a funky flower. It took a little more than an hour to get from the end of the line to the exhibit.

Sidebar: There are WAY too many roaches in the Cockrell Butterfly Center. Ick!

But back to Lois. Here are a couple of pictures I snapped.

When you walked into the room where Lois was temporarily living, you could barely smell anything. Once you got to her "good" side though, you got a big whiff of funkiness. It wasn't a very strong smell since she was already on the decline, but it definitely smelled bad!


And of course I had to draw an updated picture of Lois once she bloomed (complete with Stink-O-Meter).

I have some more thoughts and experiences to share but I'll save that for another blog post likely to be titled "The Nerdiest Thing I've Ever Done."