Another week in Barstow

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So, an update is in order I suppose. 😊

Last weekend I didn't do much. Kinda just hung out. We watched Life Aquatic.. which was.... interesting. lol. On Sunday I went to Goldstrike again, this time with Julia and Emily (2 of my housemates). It was just as fun as the first time, if not more. This time we went in some of the hotsprings and spent more time in the Colorado River. It was quite lovely. Oh, and we also saw a bat! In the middle of the day! Quite awesome, but very strange. It shouldn't have been flying around in daylight. Odd.

On monday, I just had an office day. So unexciting. We moved some furniture, organized some journals, built a shelving unit, etc. Oh and I got to have my first experiencing driving. They needed one of the vehicles brought to a car wash so I got to drive the ford escape (luckily one of the smaller cars) to the car wash, which was less than a mile away so it was just fine.

Tuesday morning I headed back down to Barstow for the week with Claire and Emily. We spent the week tracking the tortoises. It was extremely hot most of the week (in the 100s... I think tuesday got to 107), but the thing about tracking is you spend maybe an hour outside tracking a tortoise, and then you hop in the car and drive close to where the next tortoise is. So there is some relief from the heat. And with 3 of us and tortoises that for the most part aren't really moving much anymore (since it is summer they are starting to stay put in the burrows more and more), it went quickly. Oh and on wednesday I got to drive some more, this time the Silverado truck... off-roading in the desert. Fun times. It actually wasn't too terrible. But it will definitely take some getting used to.
Tuesday we worked until almost 5 but every day after that we were done by 2 and then got to just go back to the house in barstow and relax. Which was quite lovely. We watched Ed Wood one night, which was great fun. Neither of them had seen it and so it was nice. I think they liked it. 😊 One day we went to the local library. Soooo tiny! But Claire has a library card and so she was returning books and getting some more and I found another Chuck Palahnuik book that I started to read and when we left Claire checked it out for me 😊 So yay! I also watched some Arrested Development with Emily, who is also a big fan of that show. And Claire had us watch the pilot of Firefly, which I also really enjoyed. Hopefully throughout my time here I'll be able to watch the rest of the season with them. So yeah, the week was pretty nice. Most of the tortoises were easy to get to. There was one that was not.... he likes to be on top of this mountain range-ish area... it took Emily and I quite a while to get up to him, had to cross over some ridges, etc. And it was the heat of the day at that point so that was not fun. But then we found him and just when we wanted to be angry at him for choosing to live so high up, he came out from under his rock shelter. And was just so cute. It is hard to stay angry. 😊 Then there was another tortoise that I had to walk about a kilometer to get to and Claire had informed me that his nickname was You Bastard. lol. But actually it wasn't too bad. He was only up a slight hill after that km walk. Apparently he often moves around a lot and you have to walk up and down all these hills to get to him but luckily I was spared that. 😊 So yeah, a good week over all. We were done on friday by 12:30 and then we headed back to Vegas.

This weekend has been a typical lazy one for me so far. I have done nothing yet today. hehe. But, later I'm going with Julia to try to get library cards (yaaaaaay!). I also have a lot of packing to do. I have to pack for the upcoming work week (I am going to be back in Gold Butte looking for those elusive Gila Monsters again). But I also have to pack for San Fran! I am going with Julia to San Fran so that I can visit Kate! We are going to leave after work on thursday (we have friday off!) and so yeah I will be staying with kate for 2 days. I'm quite excited, both to see her, and to finally get to see this city that I have been told over and over again I would love so much. 😊 So I should have a lot to report in the next few blogs!

<3

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Photos

Me. Tired and hot.
on the way to this troublesome tortoise. at least we had good views...

Troublesome tortoise
It was hard to stay mad at him when he actually came out to say hello and was so darn cute.

Photo 4
seriously, how do you stay mad at that? :)