What the Heck do I do

So another week has ended and I am not sure what it is I do with all that time. I am so Thankful to IES for preparing me for the ‘real world’ and probably not in the way they figured. I went through two years of waiting, disorganization (with a purpose), late meetings, moved meetings and a concept that not everything needs to be ready in order to move forward. In other words, how to work in total chaos and get the most out of it. That is my job.

I literally spend the majority of my day trying to figure out what it is that i am doing that day, once it is settled it then promptly changes. I am truly learning to embrace this style of work. It makes for an interesting day.

so what did I do last week…

On Friday I worked for the entire day in the office on GIS…It was glorious. I felt so accomplished I completed the work on the next draft of vernal pool maps and got a huge chunk of the beaver maps done I tried starting on the eagle nesting maps but ran into a snag with the data that was provided. I think what will have to happen is a lot of GIS gymnastics. I will wait a bit before tackling that one.

I also went out for a hawk survey last week finishing our second round of surveys.  I heard one Broad-winged hawk along the survey route. Not a really good turn out.

In all honesty I can’t tell you anything else about last week.

 

This week

Today I was supposed to work on GIS again and make some changes to the vernal pool maps that i created on Friday. As soon as I plugged in the iPod to my ears I heard one of our net work guys come running in to the main room yelling ‘Oh my God, Boyd! (network guru) the server room is 105 degrees!’ I thought that sucks! they had to bring down the entire server farm. so that meant no GIS for the day…I can’t say that i was sorry to hear that. that meant field work for the rest of the gloriously sunny day. right after they made the announcement that all servers would be brought down Erica came around the corner and asked what i was doing for the day…I told her ‘Not GIS!’ (lol)… She asked if she could go out with us for the day, I was like no prob let get some waders and go.

Let me explain, with the limited knowledge I have, what Erica does. She works on the other side of the cubicle wall from where I work. She is the only one who works on that side. So basically she is isolated from everyone else. She sits in her cubicle and works on a project for law enforcement concerning jurisdictional boundaries. She is an intern for the summer, so she basically is unpaid. she is a college student with three semesters left until graduation. She is a double major in music and environmental science. she has already had one orchestral piece debuted at her school and has been commissioned to created another piece by the all-American orchestra which will be her graduation work. So in other words she in not a cubicle worker at heart. she jumps at the chance to get out.

So Bik, Maddie, Erica, Bruce and I all headed out to work on a slew of projects today. We cut down aspen trees for beaver bait, which according to Bruce is the beaver’s ‘ice cream tree’. we then had some equipment to install at both of our fish monitoring stations. Neither one was completed due to equipment failure. we then went out to sample a vernal pool near HQ, which did get completed.

Here are some photos from today’s events.

this is Bik, my cohort in crime:

Maddie. She  needed some photos for her work this summer.

Erica, The Isolated:

Ok I am going to write more tomorrow about my weekend which was fabulous! with a lot of hiking.

and so we go!