Bolshoy Waste of Time

So, I am about 5 hours south of home now in Cedar City, Utah. I have been here for the past 2 days. I am here for work to monitor the effects of oil and gas exploration seismic work on the endangered Utah Prairie Dog. Sounds reasonable enough, eh?

The deal is, the "dogs" have a buffer around their colonies that will prevent seismic exploration anywhere near them. Furthermore, they are currently underground, hibernating for the winter and the amount of energy put out by the machines isn't even enough to make dirt fall in from their tunnel walls. That's good.

So, the problem is, we've (yes, two biologists are required to do this, including one of us with an underground tunnel camera), only monitored one site (a total of 15 minutes) in the two days we've been here. Furthermore, we won't get to do it at all today either (like yesterday), so tomorrow morning, we will monitor one more site and then get to go home--until next week when we are needed again. Aaaaarrrrrrgggghhhh.

Guess I'll break out some more Star Trek dvds and enjoy myself some more.