If you've been anywhere near the Houston Museum of Natural Science this week, you know that despite the buzz and the crowds, not a whole lot is going on with Lois, the cheeky corpse flower.

Having been on Smelly Flower Watch for several days now, I can attest that though many people report that the rare foliage is "fuller" or more "frilly," it's just wishful thinking. I've revisited my trusty mobile phone documentation, and Lois looks pretty much the same early Wednesday afternoon as she did on Monday.

Twenty hours ago, the HMNS tweeted, "We think she may have started blooming, but it's a very slow process — nothing dramatic yet." There's nothing dramatic and there's this .... the endless bloom that never seems to even get going.

Still, it's cool to see Houston so wrapped up in something (especially something sorta scientific) but I think Lois is getting more credit than she deserves. The real stars of the show are the museum staff, who remain embarrassingly chipper despite the 24-hour days, stifling body heat and uncooperative fauna.

There's Zac Stayton, the sweet horticulturalist who's become the unwitting star of a torrid (and sometimes graphic) romantic saga painting him as the jilted lover of the giant plant he cares for — the invention of whoever's behind those CorpzFlowrLois tweets.

There's Rich, the docent who's constantly explaining to herds of disinterested children that soon, this enormous flower will smell like dead stuff. "Coooooool!"

There's the tech team that's run around for me for days, fetching extension cords and pointing out secret nooks with cushioned seating to make sure I'm up-and-running as comfortably as possible.

And at 8 o'clock this morning, Brad Levy and his fellows couldn't bear to see me make a breakfast of McDonald's coffee and offered me a bagel and schmear from their employee breakfast stash. So while Lois might be lackadaisical about giving me the story I'm here for, the museum is rife with stories of its own. Here's what we've observed:

Via Rachel Hanley: At 9:30 pm Tuesday, the line to see Lois was half the length of the museum. Everyone wants to see the flower, and everyone wanted a picture. Some had ambitions to get on the webcam — one guy went as far as to flash his business card in front of a camera, but sadly, chose the wrong one. Many people thought they saw flower movement. Lois’ room has turned into a psychological breeding ground for group hallucination.

Via Sarah Rufca: When I was on flower watch Tuesday evening there were three or four ladies hanging out with Lois all night, shooing people in and answering questions in great detail. While I thought for a couple hours that they were HMNS staff, it turns out they didn't work at the museum — they just described themselves as corpse flower "groupies." Flower children live on.

And via Brad (although I missed it): There were a couple of aged new-agers earlier this week (who identified themselves as "Indians") who sat cross-legged around Lois, chanting prayers with such vigilance that security almost had to be called because they were disrupting the interviews.

What kind of craziness have you seen on Flower Watch?