Somehow, four months have flown by, and I find myself in my final week out in Nevada. This stirs up many mixed emotions inside of me, as per usual I suppose. On the one hand, I have had an amazing time out here. I have learned quite a bit, both about research and about myself. I feel that I've learned and experienced about all I can. So, although I will sort of miss the desert landscape, I could be ready to be done. Then there's the fact that I miss people from home quite a lot and am thrilled at the [View Full Entry]

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Friday I finished work and got back home around 2pm. Unfortunately, the others weren't back til nearly an hour later. Then people had to shower and we loaded up the car. Stopped for groceries and for Julia to get books from the library. Finally set out about 4:30, which was much later than I had hoped. However, the drive went very smoothly. Even with no music. We had lots of good conversation and saw some pretty stuff. I drove the second stint, mostly in the dark. We were on this dark windy road and suddenly, there were 2 deer. Smack in [View Full Entry]

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On Monday I got to go to Piute Valley, another area of the desert where they are conducting the burn research. I hadn't been there yet so I was quite excited to go. Justin thought we'd only be out there a few hours, since there aren't many tortoises there and there were 5 of us going out. Within probably the first hour and a half we were nearly done. But then there were 3 tortoises that we could not find. And proceeded to spend the next like 3 hours looking for them. While looking for these guys, I saw some flowers! [View Full Entry]

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Following the wonderful adventures in Sequoia, we ended up back in Barstow. Met up with everyone else from work on Tuesday morning. Which meant I got to get up slightly later than if we had gone back to Henderson and had to drive back down with them. aka, got up around 5:30am. ha. Little did I know that would be the latest I would get up all week. Anywho, bleed week (or days, rather) went quite well. I was with Alison and Felicia for Tuesday morning. We bled some tortoises that I had never bled before so that was kinda cool. [View Full Entry]

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Sorry for the delay, I have been a bit tired/busy since our return from our weekend adventure. Hopefully, I can still remember all of the amazingness. Here it goes... Friday we booked it out of work as soon as we could. Most of us had started work at 5am so we thought we would be done early with plenty of time to pack the car and still get out early afternoon. This was furthered when we were all back at the office by 11am. However, we then learned our boss (one of them anyway) expected us to work a full 8hours, [View Full Entry]

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This weekend one of my best friends from high school came to visit, which was super lovely! On Friday, after picking her up from the airport, we ate food and then promptly went to the pool. Later that evening we went into Vegas. I figured that there were at least a few things she should experience. So, we went to Bellagio, and she saw the r-diculousness that is that hotel, with its indoor gardens, etc. Then we watched the fountains. Beautiful, as before. However, this time, I wouldn't help but laugh at the irony of the songs they played. For the [View Full Entry]

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This week I was once again in Barstow, tracking tortoises. It was an easy week, once again. It just gets done so quickly! Even though a lot of them had actually moved a bit this time, we still were done quickly. On Wednesday morning we got up early so we could look for missing ones for a bit before doing some tracking. Near the end of our search for lost ones, I looked to my left and there was a tortoise shell. Normally, this wouldn't mean anything. We come across quite a few shells and they are never ours. However, this [View Full Entry]

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The rest of my weekend was quite marvelous as well, although it was really Friday that made the whole weekend utterly spectacular. Saturday I slept in, as we were out late. When I awoke, it was to weather that made me question where I was. It was only in the low 80s, with 41% humidity, and dark rain clouds! Shocking. We decided we should take the opportunity to enjoy nature, and around 2pm all us interns went out to Red Rocks Canyon, which is on the other side of Vegas. It was quite a lovely day. The gift shop was pretty [View Full Entry]

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This week I was once again in Barstow. We didn't have to be at the office until 7am and that was so lovely. Since it was me and Gloria and Ignacio that were going to Barstow, we had no car and so we just walked to the office in the morning. Headed out shortly thereafter and went straight to the house. Martin needed to get his GPS from the house. And drop off his kitten! Cause that's right! We had a cat in the house for the week! It was so lovely! This kitten is absolutely adorable... and a little bit [View Full Entry]

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I don't even know how to begin to describe how amazing it was seeing LOVE. I guess I'll just start at the beginning and give it my best shot. Julia dropped Gloria and I off outside the Mirage a little after 5:30. We found the box office and picked up the tickets. They also gave us 2 tickets to the Revolution Lounge that included a drink special. Anywho, we had some time to kill so we wandered around Mirage for a bit. Spent some time watching people in the casino. AC, we stood by the craps tables for a bit. So [View Full Entry]

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