Drew's Blog

 The most recent place I've visited was the St. Louis Science Center. A location I have vague memories of visiting when I was little, but not much more than that. So I decided to take a stroll down memory lane. And sure enough. I took one look at this T-Rex animatronic near the center's entrance and I immediately got hit with a wave of nostalgia. I also wound up having good timing because the center was housing a display of Sue the T-Rex when I visited. Sue is famous among dino lovers for being both the largest and most complete tyrannosaurs-rex skeleton that has yet been found. And I've said it before and I'll say it again. As much as a love dinosaurs, I am also extremely grateful that we humans never crossed paths with them. As this reconstruction of Sue should clearly demonstrate.

 As I mentioned before I have recently started a new job as an Environmental Program Analyst for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources office in St. Louis. I am specifically working for their Water Pollution Protection Unit. Which means that I am helping to insure that publicly owned water in the state remains safe and pollution free. A job that involves both inspecting waste water treatment plants and investigating environmental concerns reported to us by members of the general public. This is my first real "career" job. And not just a temporary internship, seasonal position, or job that I'm just doing until I find one that I actually want. This new position of mine has of course had its ups and downs. But so far I have very happy to have had this opportunity and all the new experiences it has provided me. This map displays all of the Public Water Suppliers in the St. Louis region. While not exact, it does give a generally accurate display of all the places my new

 Another location I've recently visited was the American Oddities Museum in Alton Illinois. About 45 minutes from where I currently live. This is a small museum that houses various artifacts and displays about pieces of American history that can be best described as "weird", "scary", and go figure "odd". These include: American serial killers, freak show performers, haunted dolls, cults, cryptids, etc. I think my personal favorite was a display about a supposed demon possession/exorcism that took place right here in St. Louis MO. An event that would end up being the real world inspiration for the famous 1973 horror movie "The Exorcist".

 Since moving to St. Louis a new hobby of mine has been finding new and exciting places in the surrounding counties to visit over the weekend.  One of the first places I found was the Mastodon State Historic Site. This site is a local state park that was built where the Kimmswick Bone Bed was once located. Said bed was a prosperous archeological and paleontological dig site in the 1900s that provided both fossils of extinct animals and artifices from stone age civilizations. Unfortunately the bone bed has since "dried up" so to speak, which is why the location is now a state park. However, said park comes complete with a visitor center that houses a museum that both tells you about the park's history, but also has a display depicting what the local ecosystem was like at the time. Including a replica of a fully grown Mastodon skeleton. Mastodon's being the slightly smaller cousin of the famous Woolly Mammoth. Although they were still probably bigger than modern day ele

 As most of you probably now I started my first "Big Boy Job" this February as an Environmental Program Analyst for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources in St. Louis. During my first few months at my new position my manager invited me to attend a 3-day MDNR conference which began the very last way I expected it to, with an opening speech by the mascot of the Kansas City Chiefs. A.K.A. KC Wolf. He told us some stories about himself, mostly regarding some memorable events that have happened to him over his career as a mascot. Including the time he almost died when we fell from a zip line down onto the seats of a stadium during a half-time show. He then allowed us to take photos with him, as well as pass out a signed poster and KC Wolf tokens as souvenirs. And before you ask, yes, I took both a poster and token as well.

 Hello out there. I know its been a while since I've posted anything on this blog but I've had several big changes occur in my life over the past 6 months that took up so much of my attention that I wound up falling off the habit of updating this site. But I've been still taking photos of some of the memorable activities that I've been doing over these past few months and realized that I now have so many that I may as well make a few new blog posts to share them with you all. This first set are some the last photos I took in Utah that I never got around to posting before moving back to Missouri. They are of the Halloween decorations that some of my neighbors at the time had set up in their front yards. I got to say, I never expected to see people in the West take Halloween so seriously, but I'm hardly going to complain.