Mildly Disappointing

I found a whale today. In California it's not that uncommon to find whales here and there. Ocasionally one even sees one alive. The one that I found was, like so many, quite dead. After flagging off the area where I found it, I called up my supervisor who rushed out from Pasadena to see it. Her first reaction to the fossil was the same "how the hell did you see that? Good eye!" that everyone gives me when I find most of my fossils, but then she continued with "it's a real piece of shit." I'd mentioned to her on the phone that it was in bad shape and only a rib and some unidentafiable stuff (even large unidentifieable things) were exposed. We deemed the specimen unsalvageable, took some pictures, took down the flagging tape and let a scraper plow through it. It was a piece of shit, but it whas the first large mammal, first anything besides a crustacean and a few fish since starting this job. "Sorry" I said to my supervisor; "thanks for not running me over" I said to the site foreman, "I'll find something better next time".

The Important Thing is Not to Die

As of today, I am now a paleontological monitor (not to be confused with a fossil varanid). Today was mostly just filling out of paperwork, but I was taken out to two developements that the company is monitoring for archaeological significance, just so I could see how things work. The big lesson of the day was a no-brainer: stay out of the way of the earth moving machines and make sure that the drivers of said machines can always see you, otherwise there's a chance that you'll die. After all, at a construction site, you don't get injured, you get killed. You'll be lucky if the driver of the 8 ton D10 catapillar even notices the red streak that signifies your only remains. Other than the risk of death, the only downside of the job seems to be the amount of driving that I'll be doing. Today I put about 180 miles on my van. I might have taken the I5 instead of the 57 to the 210, but I would have exchanged distance traveled for time stuck in gridlock. I get paid for mileage to work site though, so it's really more about the agravation of traffic than the actual driving. Other than that, this seems like it's going to be a great job.