March 6, 2008

• Down on the farm

  
  The Pilot Range, near Wendover, NV/UT

  First things first: Fantasy Tourney Pick ‘em. ID=27767
  http://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/

  My weekend is started due to extra working earlier, so I might as well update. So, the first part of this week was spent doing some field work with Mike Enright. He’s a really great guy that I’d work for in a second, but I got plenty of work left for the state. Most of the time was spent sampling wells (mainly on farms), a program that they do yearly as part of NWIS.

  We did see some animals:

  

  A rare fox, that was acting strangely. Hopefully it was just stalking something and not sick. They need predators out there like $c needs sanctions for illegal recruiting practices. The farmers hunt coyote like they are pests, then they complain that the rabbit infestation is so bad that they can’t protect their hay. You can’t have it both ways.

  

  Some wild turkeys. I still like Ben Franklin’s idea of this being our national bird. Practical and tasty!

  

  Not wild, but this calf is minutes old, born just before we got there. It could barely stand! If cows weren’t such disgusting things, I would think this is cute.

  

  We did wells in my usual area of Snake Valley, but we drove north and I saw some things for the first time that were gorgeous: The Pilot Range (top of blog) and the Deep Creek Mountains (above). They are both very cool, and I’d love to see more of them. The Deep Creeks are shaped like a letter ‘J’, which I find unusual, especially in the Basin and Range, along strike of a detachment fault. Not really sure why. The Pilots are infamous as one of the bad decisions for the Donner Party. After taking losses crossing the Great Salt Lake Desert, they camped at Pilot Peak (the pointy one) as part of the ‘Hastings Cutoff’ “shortcut”, which was not that short. This left them weakened and desperate, which partly lead to their… um… well, if you don’t know their story, look it up, but not before or immediately after eating.

  

  So, that night, we stayed at the Wendover Peppermill, which was quite posh but cheap. If you don’t know what Wendover is, think: LA-LV, SF-Reno, SLC-Wendover. In other words, closest gambling, so swanky and epileptic-y. I did my first serious gambling that night. I put $5 on Keno and lost in 2 seconds. We then went to the Blackjack tables and I put in $20, then another $20 after the first $20 was gone. I was down to less than $10, but got back up to ~$75, then decided to quit even at $45.50 (plus I tipped the dealer $5). I even split (on 10s, won both, then 8s, lost both) and doubled-down (2/4 success rate). It was fun.

  In other news:

  

  I always think I am working hard, but fearing that I am not working hard enough. You tend to get some praise, but it doesn’t stem the tide of my fear of being fired for gross incompetence. I guess that’s just how I do things. Well, this might help: a team incentive award for my two bosses and myself, for all the work we’ve done in Snake Valley. I, of course, was not there to accept the award, but that is kind of fitting, since I got it for field work. THe extra $$$ will be spent on XM Satellite Radio. Might as well make my job easier!

  • 6:54 pm
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