Hi Folks

Yes, I know it's May - and where the hell have I been? I hear you cry.

Well working, travelling, the usual stuff. I'm gobsmacked that the time has gone soooo fast. In fact in less that 2 weeks C's parents will be back. There have been some changes mostly PC and jobwise. I now have my own sweet little PC, upstairs, my own office (small but perfectly formed) and a whole new e-mail address.

OK you know about Vegas, (cool and cool) my skiing prowess ( I can do the snow plough and we have pictures to prove it) Gaspacho (the best food in the whole wide world and I have the master's recipe) Let me tell you what we got up to last week.

One of my botanist friends needed a hand with surveying a bunch of plants in the South of Utah so she asked me to tag along. St George is a beautiful place, or at least it was until they came in and started building houses all over that georgous red rock scenery. You wouldn't catch me living down there - me no hypocrit.

We picked the hottest week to go down there (so far this year) it was in the low nineties when we started our first survey by the afternoon it was up to nearly 100 with a very hot, very strong wind blowing. I can't tell you what we surveyed or where we surveyed it but I can tell you that this plant is in the brink of being no more - mainly because the people who own the land want to sell it to developers so they can plough it over and build houses on it. They don't care about plants or even the animals that live all over this area. Our work was done by about 5.30 so we headed for the little mexican restaurant we found the night we arrived. They do great food but the Margaritas were the thing that brought us back. You guys know that I don't drink much but I do like a good Margarita and these were excellent.

Friday was more of the same except different species and we only stayed out about 4 hours because the pops were the ones we mapped last year - my directions to the place were bang on! Then we headed home with a longer than meant stop in Cedar City at a little coffee shop my friend had noticed on the way down. It was like walking into somebody's living room, the owner was friendly and chatty. It is also an internet cafe and their coffee comes in byte, mega, giga and kilo. I can recommend the "hamlet sandwich" my megabyte of coffee was just what I needed and we played chess over our lunch ( I still suck at it but we didn't complete the game so at least I didn't lose ) The place is called "the Kafe" and it's well worth seeking out.

Back in SLC the weather is nuts - it was so windy on Monday that it stirred up dustclouds and you couldn't see up the valley, tuesday and yesterday it rained like a son-of-a-bitch and today it's climbing back up into the seventies. What is with that?? I never thought I'd say this but I miss the rain. Tomorrow we're going hiking up in the Canyons - that should be fun so will probably post again on Monday.