What a Week

It has been an exhausting week, although full of lots of interesting things. I'm trying to remember what exactly it was that I spent Monday doing but I can't just off the top of my head. I think perhaps I went out into the field for a while - did a few construction checks.

I went to a really interesting conference about an hour and a half away from the office on Tuesday in Olean. I learned a lot about watersheds and Resource Conservation and Development groups. This conference and a site check on Friday, not to mention being bored nearly to tears on Thursday (more on that in a little bit) have definitely helped to confirm my conclusion that I don't want to work specifically with farms for the rest of my life. The flood at home last week also helped direct me towards wanting to work more with communities, perhaps as an environmental consultant (then I would be allowed to run for a political office).

I spent a majority of this week out in the field, primarily visiting dairy farms. Don't you just love the smell of dairy manure? One of the coolest things from this week out in the field was that I saw a brand new baby alpaca - they are the cutest things ever! If I could afford one I'd want to have an alpaca (do you have any idea how expensive they are? A baby is $3000+).

Thursday I learned just about everything there is to know about dairy grazing systems. I really hope that when I get back to Iowa that I never have to work with dairy farms or Prescribed Grazing Management programs ever again. When they first told us that we were going to have this training day it was planned to be for all the regional offices, unfortunately the region cancelled the day and it ended up being just our office that took this day to learn all this wonderfully interesting stuff. It was also meant to be a hands on day and learn how to build fencing for grazing management - that did not happen. This man, the top grazing specialist for the region, talked and talked and talked all day long. I was bored. It also didn't help that I got sunburnt and started out the morning feeling sick to my stomach (yay! for the wonderful roads of western NY).

I did get homesick this week. There was at least one night this week that I was overcome by depression. I still don't enjoy the roads of western NY nor have I found the people outside of work to be all that great.

Today I took myself to a movie, after having scurried to quickly organize my apartment and do my dishes. This morning I got a call saying that the realtor was going to be bringing someone over to look at my apt. She said they'd be here at 3 but they got here a bit earlier than that and it ended up that someone else was also going to be looking at my place a little later in the afternoon. So like I said I took myself to a movie (sad right?). I finally went and saw the Sex and the City movie - I loved it! There was almost a cat fight in the theater during the movie - one lady got mad at another because the one lady's cell phone went off several times throughout the movie. I guess you should expect something like that when you have a theater full of women - there was only one man in our theater and it turned out that he was with the lady who started the cat fight.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll play my nerdy side and go hiking and play with my gps after church. I just hope that it doesn't turn out to be too hot or that there aren't any thunder storms while I'm out and about. There have been both this week. I have experienced a change in 50 degrees since I arrived in NY. So overall this last week was long but I'm loving my weekend.