Of bones, blogs, and blackouts

Last week was finals week! It was a glorious time. Well, it was glorious once I got finals finished. I took my religion test on Monday, my editing test on Tuesday, and my semantics test on Wednesday. On Wednesday I was also able to record my piano pieces until they were acceptable. And then they were all done! I had sort of a mini YouTube party with my roommate that night, but he had to go to bed early. So after he went to bed, I started on a major undertaking. I started writing the last blog post I wrote. I wrote as many details as I could remember about the holidays of the past year. I worked on it on Wednesday night, a good portion on Thursday, a little on Friday, a fair amount on Saturday, and finally finished on Sunday. It burned me out. I don't know the next time I'll do a memory post.

I drove home on Thursday. My mom had kindly set up a dentist appointment. I inherited my personality from my dad, but I inherited my physical aspects from my mom, which is good, because my teeth were in good condition.

Something I didn't inherit from either parent is my eyesight. I had an eye appointment on Friday, and my prescription changed in the past year and a half, so I have new glasses on the way.

Since I am a geology minor, my parents offered to take me to some geological site on my days off. Of the ones they mentioned, I decided to do Dinosaur National Monument. My uncle used to live in Vernal, but due to some sad circumstances, he no longer lives there. I did a report on DNM for my Dinosaurs! class two years ago, and I even got to go to the professor's own dinosaur dig there. But the dinosaur quarry was closed because it was condemned in 2006. Six months ago it reopened. The last time I had been to the quarry was in 2003. At that time I didn't realize how amazing it was.

Starting around 1909, fossils started being excavated from the site of the quarry. Over the course of several decades, more fossils were excavated. Eventually it became no longer lucrative to extract the fossils, and in 1958 the building was built around the fossils. This is a unique opportunity to see fossils as they appear in the rock before they are excavated: 

This is one of the awesomest things ever! There was a Jurassic river and the dinosaurs' bodies were carried downstream and deposited in the sediment. Millions of years later, we have this graveyard of the bones of lots of dinosaurs in the rocks! We even have some body parts intact, such as legs

 and necks and heads.

You can go to museums and find dinosaur skeletons, but this place is unique because you can see the bones still in the rocks. There are so many of them! A veritable treasure trove of dinosaur bones!

After that we saw something that is still quite cool, but not as cool, in my opinion. We saw the Fremont Indian artwork in the area:

 There was one place where there were lots of lizard drawings. I saw eight there, and there are seven in this picture:

It made sense that there were so many lizard drawings, because there were lots of lizards there. This fellow was pretty big. 

  

In that same area the differential erosion was very obvious and beautiful. The rocks that are more heavily eroded are shales and probably limestones. The differing layers mean that there was a body of water and its level changed. Shale means it was deeper then than it was when it deposited sandstone. 

 

After that we went to the museum in Vernal. Dinosaurs are so popular, but one thing I like about Vernal's museum is that they have models of prehistoric non-dinosaurs, like these early Cenozoic mammals, 

 and this Paleozoic reptile.

 These are not dinosaurs. I can't remember if they're Mesozoic (the age of the dinosaurs) or Paleozoic (before dinosaurs).

Then we came home and I worked more on my stupid blog post, which I finished on Sunday.

Monday was a pretty fantastic day. I didn't have any classes to worry about, and although I hate heat, it was kind of nice to have a summer-like day as a last day before spring term started. I got an email from my geology professor saying that I was one of the top four students of the class (and I'm not even a geology major!) and I was excited to get a new CD, Neon Trees' Picture Show, in the mail. I went and played Capture the Flag with my ward. I haven't played that since September 14 or 15, 2006.

That night I was invited to watch a movie with my ward, but it appeared to me that the language in the movie did not meet my standards, so I decided to go running instead. (In fact, I was already dressed to go running before I got invited to the movie.) I left just before 10:00 (usually I try to run earlier than that), and I wore some brand new running shoes. They were good at first, but after a while I could tell the inside of my right foot was a little sore. But all new shoes do that. I was planning on running for an hour. I was right by my apartment at 58 minutes. I started to feel a little weird, but I was so close to an hour I decided to keep going. But it kept getting worse, and at 59 minutes I could tell I had to stop. I had had that feeling only once before, at a Halloween 5k. On that occasion I started walking and felt better. On this occasion I was trying to make it to a nearby sign to lean against.

I found myself with scraped knees, but I was enjoying my rest on the ground, where I could take nice, deep breaths. Then I realized that it probably wasn't good for me to be on the sidewalk. Then I opened my eyes. I was not even on the sidewalk--I was in the middle of the road! That's an even worse place to be than the sidewalk! I got up and my knees and hands were pretty scraped up. Fortunately I was right by my apartment, so I walked up to my apartment. I decided not to exercise anymore and I put Green Acres in the DVD player. As my roommates came home, they asked what happened to me, and I told them how I had blacked out from running. I found out I even got some blood on the doorknob. Fortunately, I don't have AIDS.

Today, due to the suggestions of relatives, I went to the doctor to find out what's wrong with me. I guess my glucose was low. I imagine I might also have been a bit dehydrated, since I played Capture the Flag in 80 degree weather before I went running. I'm not so worried about the fainting. It's my stupid knees that are killing me. It was very painful to walk up to my first class today, print publishing.

Despite my scrapes, I'm glad for spring term. The terms are always more laid back than the semesters.