Tortoises and kittens

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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 crazy. 😊 Martin found him as a stray outside the Barstow house maybe a month or 2 ago. So anyway, we didn't head out into the field til after 11. So we were out for longer than normal. Didn't finish til about 4pm. Although it was hot, it was not totally unbearable, by any means. Once done we went into town to get groceries, food, and gas. Later that night Gloria and I tried to get tickets for Cirque du Soleil. We had decided on O, the water cirque du soleil. I called to try to order tickets for saturday. It was going well until the woman told me the price of the two tickets was going to be over $200. At which point I was like whoooooooa hold up. I thought there was the promotion of buy one ticket get the second for $25. Apparently not for that show. She said the only tickets they had for that show with the discount were the most expensive category. Which would've meant that it would've been about $90 each. We didn't really want to do that so I said I would call back. After much thought we decided to look into other shows. LOVE had been our second choice but we hadn't really looked into the others. So we did. Some of those also looked really cool so we tried to get tickets for them. No luck. All sold out for this weekend. However, LOVE did still have tickets for Friday night! Thus, the decision was simplified. And I was still super excited because I had really wanted to see that show. Cause I mean, Beatles and Cirque du Soleil?! I figure it can't get much better than that. Also, I had been contemplating going to see Green Day since they were playing in Mandalay Bay but that was friday night so that made that easy as well. 😊

On Tuesday, we left around 6:30 and then stopped about 12:30. During that shift I was with Gloria, in the Ford F150 (ugh, such a monster) and we were going to Plot 5, in addition to a tortoise where Angela got stuck the last time she drove the F150. So I was slightly petrified. Managed to do that tortoise without any troubles. I was ueber careful. It was r-diculous. The tire holes from when Angela got stuck were still there. And that was weeks ago. Yikes. Then there were no more troubles for a little bit. But then at one point I was heading the wrong direction so I turned onto another path in order to turn around and when I did I got stuck. I stopped immediately. Only the rear left tire was stuck. So, we tried to dig it out and stuck a rock under the tire. I attempted to drive forward. No success. It only got worse! At this point I was slightly panicky because I didn't want to make it any worse. It had already sunk further down. But Gloria was very calm and optimistic and that was very very helpful. We dug it out again, put more rocks under the tire and also covered the sand in front of the tire with pebbles (Gloria's idea). Also radioed Martin to get his opinion on what to do. Then I put the truck into 4 wheel low and tried to drive forward... with success!!! It was very exciting. Quite a feeling of accomplishment. 😊 Rest of the day was uneventful. Spent the afternoon just relaxin. Went back out in the evening for just a few hours and did some more tracking. During that time I found the cutest wild tortoise I have ever seen. It was so curious! It walked RIGHT up to me, and was poking around under the antenna. Way cute. Of course, I didn't have my camera on me. Figures. Totally made my night though. 😊

Wednesday we were finished in just a few hours. Were finished with the last of the tracking by noon and got to just relax for the rest of the day. I looked some more for future employment opportunities. Have found a few things that look promising so I will try to apply to them asap.

Thursday we got up early to look for some missing tortoises. No luck finding them. Sadly. Were back at the house about 8:30. I then thought I would nap but I didn't really end up doing that. Although I did rest. Friday was basically the same deal. We looked for missing tortoise in the morning. Again no luck. Headed back up to Henderson around 10am. Stopped for lunch at Panera (YAAAAAAAAAAAY! made my life. I got to have that amazing strawberry poppyseed salad).

After dropping stuff off at the office and getting our assignments for next week, we walked back to the apartment. Went to the pool for a bit. Lovely. Read some and then showered and ate and prepared for the night in Vegas! Will write about that in a separate entry. Brace yourselves...

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