The Great Mouse Hunt

Did you know that you can make flax seeds into granola? I didn’t. I want to try it but I can’t find flax in the middle-of-nowhere.

Today’s Exploit:

We have mice.

It appears that we have many of them.

We saw 3 in about 10 minutes the other day.

That is when the hunt began.

Matt and George and Reed take turns with the BB gun, they have set out a multitude of sticky traps and all the doors are blocked with towels to keep them out of bedrooms.

They do this because the mice seem to like to cuddle with me.

They managed to shoot one and catch another on a sticky trap. 

Another got caught in a sticky trap when they were all gone.

It was so sad. 

I hate sticky traps.

So I took the trapped mouse outside and dropped a brick on it so it wouldn’t have to struggle and eventually starve.

I didn’t like it.

I almost cried.

And there was no one there to give me a hug.

A Long Job

Today’s Exploit:

We drilled 7 feet last night. It was a winner of a 12-hour cycle. 

This job is supposed to be done in 4 days, according to the report I received from my manager at the beginning. We have 2 wells to drill and are still working on the first 500 feet of the first one. That means that we still have over 9000 feet to drill. 

At 1.02 feet per hour. 

This is going to be a long job.

A Poem on Drilling

Countdown:  11 Days.  The nerves.  They tingle.

They’re really trying to convert me to shrimp and crawfish out here.  By way of stuffing it down my throat.  

Today’s Exploit:

It never fails.  

The well is almost done.  You want to go home.  Things are going well. 

Go get excited about going home tomorrow or the next day.

BAM!

Something breaks.  You must stay another week.

Cry.

This Week: In Review

Countdown:  62 Days.  

Have you read Clockwork Angel yet?  I like it.  

Today’s Exploit:

This week was the week from hell.

Monday:  Start new run.  This should be smooth sailing because we’re using fancy-schmancy tools.

Tuesday: Tool fails, but the help desk and manager are desperate to make it work.  Try random, pointless modifications for 3.16 hours. Aand we have no backup tools. 

Tuesday Night:  Backup arrives 5.3 hours after they told us it should 11pm.  Race to program and pick up new arrival.

Wednesday:  Yay, the tool is working, and I’m giddy from lack of sleep.  Just for good measure I get an infection that makes doing anything and nothing hurt.  Spend 3 hours in the emergency room because the doctor is busy.  Then he prescribes pain pills I said I didn’t want and some antibiotic after beating me up.

Wednesday Night:  Arrive back at the rig to discover tool problems again.  The DD thinks he’s the king of the world, and the manager tells me to change the sensor again.  You know how that story ends.

Thursday:  Things are working, but loopy from lack of sleep.

Friday:  Hospital calls and says that antibiotic isn’t going to work, you have to get a new one.

Friday Night/Early Saturday:  We finished drilling!  PS You get to stay up late changing the tool again.  And that gunk in your eye?  It’s not just sleep, or lack thereof.  It’s probably pinkeye.  Hehe.

Saturday:   Also, the pharmacy’s closed so no one can tell you what kind of eyedrops you should get.  And your eye is going to insist on feeling like a gargoyle is using it as a stress ball.

On the plus side, I did get to sleep for a few hours while they tripping back in.

My Yard is too Small

I think I just became the worst lead hand ever.  I slept through my alarm for the second time, on just this job.

Today’s Exploit:

I miss Jack.  He’s now a lump of mush on my porch, attracting flies and making my landlord call with requests for me to remove him.  I want it to still be Halloween so that I can carve another.

I also miss these two dudes.  I think they need to come stay with me.  We would make cookies and go for bike rides and play “Tickle Monster”.  Unfortunately my yard is not as good as their yard for that game.

Helping my sister make pizza for her birthday.

Posing for me when I visited in April.

Tired of Working

Today’s TV gems:  super-crazy preacher-lady, Looney Tunes.

I still get the whole back-story, to be sure I’m up to date on these wonderful shows, and the conclusion, in case I might leave just before the show ends.

Today’s Exploit:

I’ve slept four nights in my bed since moving it to my new apartment a month an a half ago.  Most of my nights have been spent running mile and miles to escape the Friday Night Fight Night or Monday Night Smackdown.  

Naturally the top four shows watched in this trailer are:

*The Newlywed Show

*Deal or No Deal

*Smackdown

*Whatever-other-fake-wrestling-show-they-can-find

And they wonder why I don’t spend evenings lolling on the couch with them.  

With the exception of the Newlywed Show each of these contains excessive jumping-around-like-a-lunatic and far to few articles of clothing.  They also contain horrible acting skills, but are taken very seriously by Pat and Ricardo.  

They spend hours discussing the results of the wrestling shows, and exclaiming, “Did you just see that?!”  Most of these exclamations follow very graceful gymnastic stunts where someone gets “knocked out”.

Another delightful pastime of my roommates is to aggravate the night mud logger.  This guy is not pleasant to be around, he complains about everything and is never wrong, but they get him riled up to a fanatical state.

The other night they were doing this as I tried to sleep, after only getting four hours of sleep the night before.  I can generally hear only pieces of their conversations, but this night it escalated into a shouting match.  When I mentioned this the next morning they said, “Oh, we thought you were just taking a long run.”

Seriously?  It’s been dark for two hours!  I’ve never been gone for more than an hour an a half; and you brush off the fact that I probably would have left five hours ago on this run?  At least I know the roughnecks worry about me, they can tell me how long my last four runs lasted.  

I’m stuck in a black hole of utter oblivion, half-naked TV shows and micro-scrutiny.

I want a day off.

Horrible

I have a pedometer in my new iPod.  Fascinating. 

I ran for 55 minutes and took 4475 steps.  I estimate that to be 5 miles.  Plus some walking in the middle.

Today’s Exploit:

North Dakota was a disaster.  

It was pretty and green and not entirely flat.  And it was not 103 degrees every day.  In fact I got up to temperatures in the mid 50s two days.  It was delightful.  And I got to run without feeling like I was going to pass out from heat if I stopped for a second.  

And it was the worst experience I’ve had since starting my job.  

I was completely miserable.  

The tools didn’t work, and I messed up and I got yelled at for not knowing how to fill out their multitude of paperwork.  In triplicate.  Sometimes in four-plicate. 

Then they wouldn’t tell me how to fix the paperwork.  They’d just yell at me some more.  

And after that they would patronize me. 

I wanted to strangle all of them.

So I had some melt-downs behind the storage shed and pretended the phone got unplugged without me knowing.  

My real manager is now my hero for telling them I needed to come back to Texas early.  

Never thought I’d be homesick for TEXAS.  

Disgusting.

Epic Battle

I discovered the other day that I left the power cord for my work computer in the office.  In Houston.  Yay.

Today’s Exploit:

I think I’m finally better.  

That fever turned out to be the not-so-subtle message to me saying “GO TO THE HOSPITAL!”  I  am a bit oblivious sometimes and didn’t catch the more delicate hints.

So I went to the doctor and got drugs for my illness.

I spent the next few days sleeping on the couch because the bed was too hard.  

I also had the pleasure of being squeezed by a bridge troll, stabbed by an evil pixie, stomped on my an elephant and bashed over the head by a gargoyle.  

It made me want my mom.  

It made me want chicken noodle soup.

Next time I get a “knot in my back” I’m not waiting until I get a chance to get a massage.  I’m going to the doctor.  

Stupid kidneys.

Fevered Delusions

This is my favorite song right now.  

Today’s Exploit:

This morning I woke up freezing.  FREEZING.  In Texas.  In the summer.

At first I just thought they turned down the AC and I’d be fine in a minute.  

After an hour of shaking violently enough to rattle my teeth I decided that I needed to go outside to get warm.  I could tell something was not quite right because my skin was warm to touch, but I was still shivering like I was in an earthquake.  But my main focus was getting outside so that I could be warm again.

So I went out and sat in the sun.  

Normally just walking outside makes me feel like I’ve been slapped in the face with a shot of steam, but today it took me a full 4.87 minutes to feel warm.   

About when I started to feel warm I also started to feel like I might be sick and wanted some privacy.  So I stumbled behind the trailers and across the road.  After tripping over a rock and my own feet 17 times I made it.  That was when I realized that I had a good chance of losing consciousness and privacy probably wasn’t at the top of the list of things I needed anymore.  

So I turned around and shuffled back to the trailer where I scared the socks off Enrique, the other MWD.  He helped me to the couch and gave me drugs to help my fever, and then he made me sleep on the couch the rest of the morning so that he could make sure I didn’t get any worse.  

Starla’s Hissy Fit

I love Texas, I love Texas, I love Texas.

It’s my mantra.  

Sometimes it changes to I love my job, I love myjob, Ilovemyjob.

Occasionally it’s a little hysterical.  Specially when I have to put the tool together at noon, in 104 degree direct sunlight.

Today’s Exploit:

Yesterday I stopped for “coffee”.  You remember that time I looked for apartments?  Yeah.  That stop.

I did my search and drank my smoothie and packed my computer back up with my list of places to visit ready at hand.

I got in Starla and put the key in the ignition.  I got Timmy-the-GPS ready with the first address for apartment hunting then turned the key.

Starla:  Chug, chug, click click click

Me:  No, Starla.  Please start.

Starla:  Click Click click

So I rerouted Timmy-the-GPS for the nearest garage, then I went across the street to the gas station to be sure.  

Luckily there was a garage right across the street.  

I walked over and begged the mechanics for help.  So they came over to try to jump her.  They were very nice and didn’t make me call a tow truck, and Starla did start with a jump.

So I drove her over and got her registered for the car doctor.  But now she’s back to purring.  

Thankfully.

I Don’t Think They Believe Me

Patrick doesn’t believe that I have a hard time making friends on rigs.  

He also thinks I’m normal.

Today’s Exploit:

When I went to the office I told my manager that I want to move to the Rockies.  

He was telling me how horrible Houston is.  The traffic’s terrible, the sprawl is terrible, the heat is terrible, the humidity, the drought, the hurricanes...

I told him that I agreed with him, and that I want to move to Colorado; I miss the mountains, and winter.  And temperatures below 576 degrees.

He chuckled and told me that I’d have to work mostly in North Dakota, where it’s always cold.  

I admitted that the cold might not be fun.  Somehow I think he took that to mean I’d changed my mind.  

Not so.  I’d rather suffer through the cold than suffer through the heat.  Maybe he’ll start to believe me if I tell him again.  

I might have to start calling him occasionally, just to tell him that I want to transfer.  Maybe he’ll let me move if I’m obnoxious enough.

One of the roughnecks told me the other day that you can’t put on enough clothes to stay warm in the north.  But you can take off enough to stay cool in the south.  

I disagree with his logic.  But then I haven’t worn a real coat since I started working here.

Ha Ha. Tricked You!

The guy:  Outdoor adventure guide.  Travels all over the states for activities similar to a Ropes course.

The line:  I’ve stayed in some pretty amazing places, and I’ve woken up to many views that rival your beauty.


The response:  ... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Today’s Exploit:

I was really excited to come to this job because I thought I’d get to be the boss.  Not only work days, but be in charge as well.  I would be working with a contractor.

I was happily setting things up in the trailer when Patrick showed up.  

He’s not a contractor.  He’s just out of Eng-1, the three month class to learn about the basic tools.  

After getting most of our gear set up I finally hooked up the internet and got some emails.  

Turns out I get to work nights.  

Again.

Patrick has to break out on this job.  

I’m not sure I’m the best candidate to break him out.  I’ve led three jobs in my time here.  I’ve only worked with someone less qualified than I once before.

Also the rig is broken.  I’m beginning to think it’s me that causes these problems, for reals.

The Fly Capital of the World

Whew, this is three posts I’ve written today.  I’m worn out.  I think I need a nap.

Today’s Exploit:

This place is the fly capital of the world, I think.  I shoed 7 out the door, killed 10 and still had 17 buzzing around my head and landing on my cinnamon rolls.  

Gross.  

And that’s inside.  

Outside...

Mostly it’s ok because the wind is blowing at a hurricane force gail most of the time.  It’s nice because it’s some movement of the air in this incessant heat.  And it keeps most of the creepy-crawlies away.

But,

In front of our trailer, the one that is hiding behind the other crew trailer.  There was a sewage leak, and the other trailer shelters it from the wind.  

The flies gather in swarms.

Gross.

Please Don’t Call Me That, I’m Not That Old

I’m so proud of myself. I just made a menu and grocery list for an entire week! That has never happened before in my life.

Unless you count planning for Thanksgiving as planning for a week. It makes enough food for a week.

Today’s Exploit:

Have I ever mentioned that I hate being called Ma’am?

Well I do.

And I can’t get away from it.

Everyone and their dog says Ma’am automatically here.

I can handle Darlin’ and even don’t hate Baby-doll, but Ma’am…

When I first started working here it made me still want to jump out of a tall, tall window. Since it happens 48 million times a day, I’ve learned to tolerate it. To the point that I only grit my teeth. Every so often I try to ask the rig hands not to Ma’am me. It goes something like this:

Them: …, Ma’am.

Me: Please don’t call me Ma’am.

Them: Yes, Ma’am

Me: BIG sigh.

It’s on my hate list right below the heat. And just above the 60 mph wind when I try to play Ultimate Frisbee.

A Stack of Dirty Bowls Would Make Me Cry

HAPPY SUNDAY!

I hope your day is filled with deviled-eggs and purple chickies and rabbit prints in the dust. And much happy family time.

This is what I hope is waiting for me when I get home.

Today’s Exploit:

I get to drive today! And see how much work it will really be to organize my desk.

Right now I’m imagining piles of papers, papers that I have to keep, overflowing and falling on the floor. All randomly tossed on the stack, with only a miniscule reference to where it is actually supposed to be filed.

And the spare bedroom. That is a nightmare of stuff I don’t otherwise know what to do with. And a few half finished projects.

Thankfully I have made it a rule to do the dishes and run the dishwasher before I leave. Every time. Even if it makes me late. Because the idea of going back to a stack of unwashed bowls and pans and spatulas and muffin tins would probably break me.

No Soup Today Friends

Thought of the day:


Using Microsoft’s Outlook is like sticking a fork in my eye. Then turning it, for good measure.

Today’s Exploit:

When I woke up today I was really excited to go into town and get the 3.2 things I need to make some soup. It sounded really good when I was telling Cupcake about it last night.

So I got up early and did my workout and took a really fast shower. (Really fast showers are getting more and more difficult. Long hair is a pain in the foot.) Then I got dressed and brushed my hair – not something that happens often – and grabbed my keys.

I hopped down the stairs and skipped over to my car to discover a truck.

A truck with a nice long trailer parked in the middle of the road.

He was just in the right spot that if I was able to inch out of my slot I still would have had no chance of getting by on either side of him. Specially with the forklift loading and unloading drilling collars.

I looked at Starla. Then I looked at the truck. Then I looked at the space between the trailer and all the other trucks.

Then I pouted and went back inside to eat a bowl of Cheerios.

I waited and waited and waited.

The truck driver left just in time for me to not have enough time to make it to town and run into the market for my 3.2 items.

I’m sure he was laughing all the way home: NO SOUP FOR YOU!

Decoding the Dance Instructions

I just ate half a bag of carrots; I think my skin is turning orange. And my hair will probably be green soon.

Today’s Exploit:

In April I am supposed to be performing at Showcase. That is a fancy name for a dance recital. My song is picked out and my dance is all choreographed. Now I just need to keep it all straight in my head during the time I’m at work. This may be difficult considering I can’t understand the notes, no one here knows how to Tango, and I can’t dance in steel-toed boots. Even pink ones.

I’ve tried. Also, this is what the notes look like:

Tango – Por Una Cabeza

1. Lean in
2. Send out
3. Step .5 step
4. Step .5 pivot
5. Step .5 step
6. Step .5 pivot
7. Walk to cortè
8. Contra to link
9. Promenade to lunge
10.
11. Double cruise
12. Walk backs to link
13. Promenade to link
14.
15. Promenade to send out
16. Lean to
___________
Kick, Flick & Drop

This is what Shawn wrote. I have no idea what it means, and I’m terrible at remembering the names of the moves. Also this is only a third of the song. The rest is worse.

Hopefully that week before the performance will be enough to re-learn the whole thing.

I might need an understudy. If you know what this stuff means please come take my place. ‘Cause I’m scared. I need my blankie and teddy.

Or maybe my orange mixing bowl. That would probably work.

The Breakfast Taco Curse

Summer has already begun. Days are hot and nights are comfortable. Juniper Berries, it’s only February. I have to deal with this nonsense until the end of October!

Today’s Exploit:

Every so often I’ll get a call from the rig floor asking if I want a breakfast taco. I try to decline, but the people who might take “no” as my answer will be offended if I actually say “no”. I’ve noticed that almost anyone who offers food will be offended if I decline.

It’s a curse.

For example, breakfast tacos. Breakfast tacos usually consist of scrambled eggs, bacon or sausage and sometimes potatoes. And, of course, tortillas. The problems is that I don’t like eggs. And I don’t like sausage or bacon (unless it’s a special occasion and we’re at the cabin). And the potatoes are generally cooked into the eggs and pig meat. So I am left to pick out potatoes trying to avoid the eggs and pigs while not appearing to be discriminating. They would be offended if they knew I didn’t like those two immensely important breakfast staples.

Also, generally by the time they offer I’ve already eaten breakfast. So I’m not at all hungry. Then they get worried that I don’t like the tacos because I can’t scarf them down in 3.2 seconds like the boys out here can.

I am left to lie my heart out, telling them how hungry I was and how good the tacos con juevos y pigs were. And while I feel guilty about not particularly liking the tacos I don’t feel the least bit of remorse for lying to them about me not liking the food.

This is a breakthrough. I don’t feel guilty about lying. I will have to ponder this further. Maybe I can extend it to other parts of my life. Maybe I can morph it into the ability to be mean to people who deserve it.

In the mean time I’ll be ballooning up to immense proportions off food that I don’t want, sort of like the girl in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” who was obsessed with gum and ate the gum when Mr. Wonka told her not to. I might turn purple as well. So the next time you see a big purple blimp with a head say hi, it’s probably me.

Soap in the Eye, SOAP IN THE EYE!

This kid puts in way more effort than I ever did as a trainee. That’s probably why it took so long for them to promote me to working days. Also I never complained about it.

Probably I should start being obnoxious if I want to move up in the ranks.

Today’s Exploit:

The other day I was being proactive, and preparing for my trip. I was trying really hard not to procrastinate because I wanted to be on time. (I would have been, if not for the traffic in Fort Worth. I should know better, traffic there is ALWAYS bad.)

I took Starla to the car wash because my she hasn’t been cleaned in 3.8 years. And because it smelled like vinegar and capsaicin from the bottle of hot sauce that broke and dripped all over everything.

First I had to clean all the junk out of my car. Junk accumulates exponentially in my passenger seat. The back seat junk doesn’t so much accumulate as grow and intertwine, rather like the vine on my grandparents’ house. The one that was pulling the siding off.

In the process of removing the junk my fingers came into contact with the dribbly mess on the floor. This wasn’t a problem until I decided that my neck itched. And failed to connect the knowledge that my hands had been immersed in liquid heat, and the skin on my neck is far more sensitive than that on my hands. I spent the next two days fighting a lovely heat rash.

I finally made it to the car wash and spent a small fortune trying to vacuum the grass and hair out of the carpet. Car-wash vacuums are not good for removing hair from car-carpet. The grass was only slightly easier to remove.

Eventually I pulled into the bay to wash Starla’s exterior. She is perpetually dusty from driving the poorly maintained roads to rigs. I scrubbed and washed and sprayed and shined.

I was feeling rather rushed because some dude in a Jeep pulled in behind me and only took 37 seconds to vacuum his car.

I finally finished and was getting ready to pull away when I remembered the floor mats. I had to wash them. They were the vinegary culprits, the entire reason I went to the blasted car-wash-place.

So I made apologetic faces at the dude in the Jeep and stuck a few more quarters in the machine. I decided I could just go with a rinse. Soap probably wasn’t entirely necessary.

Unfortunately “Rinse” does not mean just water. I was spraying the first mat when a fleck of spray rebounded and made a beeline for my right eye.

Ack!

I put my free hand over my eye and doggedly finished cleaning the mats. Then I grabbed them and threw them over the fence to dry and booked it out of the bay.

I sat in the sun and sprayed my face with eye drops. And cried my eye out.

When the mats were mostly dry, I stuck them back in the car and went home to assess the damage. I rinsed my eye with regular water for a while and then tried eye drops again.

It turns out that the drops were actually making my eye burn worse. So I stopped that and refrained from touching my eye more than necessary until the next morning.

The only lasting damage was to my pride and vanity. They suffered greatly as I drove home with mascara running down my face, my eye red and swollen and my shirt drenched with saline solution.

Unwanted Information

Common conversation:

Them: What did you do before you worked out here?

Me: I was a wildland firefighter.

Them: No way! You went into buildings and saved people? I can’t imagine you wearing all that equipment!

Me: No, wildland. I fought forest fires.

Them: Oh, you were a smoke jumper?

Me: No.

Today’s Exploit:

The other night I was sitting in the kitchen while Noah talked. He’d exhausted his phone and his boredom as topics, so he started telling me about a mentor he had.

He was getting ready to leave somewhere. (I’m not sure where, I have a hard time paying attention to what he’s actually saying anymore.)

“She kept thinking of things to tell me about the job, but then she started talking about her life and telling me everything about herself. She just didn’t want me to go, and I really didn’t want to know that stuff. Man, she was a talker; she talked all the time. I don’t think she ever stopped.”

I stared at him blankly for a few minutes trying as hard as I could not to burst out laughing. Then I went back to making my sandwich and trying really hard to ignore the blather.

PS Today was the first day I didn’t have to walk out and close the door while he was still talking. He had to leave before me, so it was nice and quiet for just a few minutes. Lovely.

PPS This was not at all what I had intended for this post. Maybe tomorrow I’ll remember where I was headed initially.