Shit, Fuck, DAMN!

So, as if it couldn't have gotten worse by having Kat Whitehill out from the Olympics from the US Womens Soccer team...one of the leading scorers and probably top players in the WORLD (luckily we had her), Abby Wambach, broke her leg in a friendly against Brazil July 16th and is out of the Olympics.

I love my girls and I hope for a quick recorvery from Abby so she'll be able to get back to the field after the Olympics. I've been a HUGE womens soccer (soccer in general) fan, but none more than when I saw them win the GOLD in the Olympics last year. And almost win the Womens World Cup last year.

For stats on Wambach or any of the other girls that represent the USA (oh, and they're 21-0 right now...woot woot) check out www.ussoccer.com.

All the fans can say now is... shit, fuck, damn. Hopefully the team will still pull through! I have faith in my ladies! Get it done girls!

-Erin

Little Bit of Music and a Whole Lot of Diggin'

So it was a great Thaw weekend! Amazingly enough, Wyoming is even greener than Colorado. This year alone, while conserving water by putting buckets and empty bins and trash cans underneath the drains, my dad and step-mom have collected almost 400 gallons of water. Pretty neat. We had the usual thunderstorms (pic above of some lightning I managed to snap during the Sunday night thunder boomer), but other than that the weather was nice.

I found some nice native tool chips, not quite what I was looking for, but the guy that lives down the way from my dad's place came up and told me about a place he'd scoped out with bones lying in the ground. He'd gotten permission to have them, but didn't really want them since they didn't have an arrowhead in them and weren't mammoth, so he said he'd help me dig them out if I gave them a home. I got out about 20 nice verts in a row after taking pics and measuring them.

At first I wasn't going to excavate since I couldn't get them all out at once, but I took as many as I could when he said he'd over heard that the man that owned the land was going to use this particular spot to store extra rock he would be using for patching holes in the road up to his house. So...unfortunately, some got left behind. Maybe I'll be able to get the rest out later this year or next.

Above are some photos of the trip!

Pic 1: One of the many verts that I discovered at the site.
Pic 2: Koko, my step-mom's dog. The sweetest dog ever that loves to play fetch - but we used all of her sticks to build the fire so she just looked longingly into the flames.
Pic 3: Lightning over the barn where we played music for the locals.
Pic 4: Fire pit in the front yard
Pic 5: My dad (guitar) and uncle (stand up bass) playing away during the gig we played.

Anywho, it was a hoot! Lovely this time of year. If you EVER visit northeastern Wyoming (Devil's Tower is visible from her doorstep if you need a reference), please do it in May or early June. Before everything browns and catches on fire. And if you're ever up there the weekend after Memorial weekend, come to Gilette or Moorcroft and look for posters and information on The Thaw (our spring concert).

:)

More later!

-Erin

N.V.G.A: Supercon

Huzzah to our Colorado Cutthroat Connection (C3) boys (and girls) that went to the National Video Games Association's Supercon in New Mexico!

Colorado took just about everything there: Virtua Fighter 5, Guilty Gear, Halo 4 v. 4, Smash Bros., Eye of Judgment, and probably something else that I've forgotten about.

New Mexico needs to step up their game. I was a bit bummed that I didn't get to go to compete in the Call of Duty 4 part, but seeing as I'm leaving for Wyoming tomorrow, I probably couldn't have taken two weeks off for a video game tournament as well as taking a half a week off for my Wyoming trip. Oh well.

Wish me luck in Wyoming! We're doing our annual spring concert for the people of Pine Haven (you'll have to look it up) called the Thaw, so I'll be there from Weds until probably Monday. Hopefully I'll be able to do some fossil hunting while I'm up there. The guy that owns property just farther up the hill from where I'll be staying has a plesiosaur in his front yard, so that's cool.

-Erin

"It's pining for the fijords!"

This is a nifty article on a newly discovered parrot fossil from Scandinavia, probably the oldest fossil of a parrot (possibly, from only one bone they say it could have been an ibis).

Anywho, check out the article.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/05/080523-oldest-parrot.html

-Erin

Outing

I was out at a few sites where I work called Triceratops Trail, Dinosaur Ridge and the I-70 Road Cut taking some photos of trampled dinosaur trackways for our exhibits and had a pretty good day. Despite the tornadoes that ravaged north-eastern Colorado yesterday, the foothills were breezy and about 65-70 degrees with just a bit of rain.

Here's some pics that I took yesterday. Those geo and paleo fans may find them interesting. Pics of some ornithopod trackways from the South Platte Formation (Dinosaur Ridge), a small wild lizard (non-dinosaurian), a lovely look at the green/gray/maroon siltstones of the Morrison Formation, neat vertical banding in mudstones from (I believe) the Lytle Formation, and a trampled track area from the Laramie Formation (probably Triceratops and a species of hadrosaur, most likely Edmontosaurus as the formation is aged to 68 MY).

-Erin

A Frogamander!

Howdy! For those that are interested, check out this National Geographic post on a new, 290 million year old amphibian they think may be the missing link in that particular family tree.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/05/080521-frog-fossil.html

So, nifty stuff! I know NatGeo doesn't always publish the "newest" of materials, but I hadn't read this on before.

-Erin

Oh the Joy of Blogging

So, since everyone else in the world (wide web) has a blog...I figured that MySpace doesn't really count and created one here. I'll probably be focused on science, video games, paleontology and geology, since those are things I'm pretty passionate about.

So...hope you all enjoy! Please comment as you need, good or bad, but if you don't leave a name at the bottom of an anonymous post it'll probably be deleted. Just so you all know. :)

Happy blogging!

-Erin