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Other Aspects of My Life
liz and cats
Liz and the cats

Some people say that my work is my life, but I would rather say that my life coincides closely with my work. That is to say, for the most part, I get paid to do the things I would do if I didn't work (ah, life was so simple back then. I suppose I should get around to updating this statement -- it seems so quaint now).

However, I do enjoy some things that I can't get paid to do. I like to camp in the remote reaches of the desert - as far from other people as I can get. I also like to watch birds, and there are some great places around Las Vegas to do that. But one of the best things is to sit on the Zone-tailed Ranch in northwestern Arizona and watch the sunset. And if I get tired of that, I can sit on our Starlight property in the California desert and relax.

mocha cat
Mocha
In the mean time, while we are in town, we cruise the Las Vegas strip and watch the weirdos, or we can stay home and play with the two cats who graciously let us live in their house. We eventually lost those two cats to kidney disease, but Liz found another homeless cat, and now Mocha isn't homeless anymore.
zt ranch
ZT Ranch
If all else fails, I can always stay inside (in the air conditioning) and work on my hiking, birding, and southern Nevada wilderness areas websites, or add to my Miscellaneous Ecological Notes Series (I guess I don't get around to that very often any more). These notes are compilations of eMail discussions that I participated in and were of some general interest or other notes and comments.
starlight
Starlight

One other thing we do in the Nevada desert is wait and watch for UFOs. Now most people would say that UFOs don't exist, but I am here to say that this just isn't the case. As you would know from reading other parts of my web site, I work on the Nevada Test Site where the government keeps captured "vehicles" and frozen bodies. Of course, I can't tell anyone about my activities in "the area that doesn't exist" (generally identified by an integer between 50 and 52). In the mean time, keep the faith and check out the ET Highway that runs through middle Nevada and was recently dedicated by the state.

Needless to say, life in the desert is good to us.

yucca mountain
Yucca Mountain
I worked on the Yucca Mountain Project for 11 years. This project was an attempt by the US Department of Energy to bury high-level nuclear waste in a permanent underground storage site (repository) under Yucca Mountain, Nye County, Nevada. I started as an Animal Ecologist, but held different jobs as the politics (and therefore the funding) changed. Yucca Mountain was of environmental interest to me because it is located in the little-studied transition zone between the hot and dry Mojave Desert to the south and the cold and dry Great Basin Desert to the north.
Note: All distances, elevations, and other facts are approximate.
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