Moving: Rig Version

Countdown:  15 Days.

Cookie Project:

Today’s Exploit:

I moved trailers the other day.

I’m not sure if the boys were glad to see me go so they had more space; or if they were just jealous that I got to be in a nicer trailer.  Now that we’re almost done drilling the living quarters are somewhat desirable.  

Granted it does smell in this trailer at times, but it’s due to someone working.  As opposed to boys letting their dishes moulder in the sink too long, or put off doing laundry as long as possible.  

The room and the bathroom are considerably smaller.  But man, is it quiet in that trailer.

Besides the room being smaller, there’s nothing like moving to make one realize just how much junk one has hoarded away.  

It took me four trips to get my junk from one trailer to the other.  And I get to move said junk to my car in another couple days.  

Currently I’m working on a strategy to cram all of it together so that it takes up less space.  Thus leaving me with fewer loads to tote out to Starla.  

Fake Post

Countdown:  60 Days

Today’s Exploit:

I’m too busy making new playlists for Starla to write a real post.  I’m a terrible blogger.

Speed Bump

I’m having a soup craving.  

Today’s Exploit:

The road to this rig is the worst I’ve ever encountered.

It is paved.

It doesn’t have many potholes.

It isn’t flooded.

It is relatively level, though not very wide.

It does, however, have 3.5 of the largest speed bumps I’ve ever encountered.  

Poor Starla hates me every time I decide to go to town.  I hate me too.

One only spans half the road, so I can go around it.  One is 4 feet across, so going over it is not exceedingly painful.  One is semi-tolerable if I take it at an angle.  

The last one is a doozy.

The last one gets me every time, no matter how fast or what angle I attempt to cross it.  

Starla cries, and I curse and cringe.  

It is a good thing I don’t “need to” go to town often.  Because that bump sure puts a damper on things.  I have been trying to only go when I’m starving because I have nothing else in the fridge.

Follow Up: The Mountain

I have spent the last day an a half laughing hysterically at the divine comments Dana makes on this blog.

Today’s Exploit:

Follow up.  

The state of my poor car is not particularly impressive until you see the pile that I managed to cram into such a small space.

Let's pretend, for a moment, that the table represents the pieces I hid in my closet.

This was all in a CIVIC.
It makes me cringe to remember how many times I climbed into the trunk to get all this to fit.

My Amazing Work of Art: The Molehill

We have a cold front today.  The high is only 68*F.  The low is 42*F.  

Sadly it will be back into the 80s in about 4.2 days.

PS Happy All Hallows’ Eve and Happy Birthday to my cousin, Aly.

Today’s Exploit:

My masterpiece:

My back seat is overflowing, but I can still see my blind spot.  I'm just trying to be a safe driver.

Not so much out the rearview...

Packing a Mountain into a Molehill

I’ve been a slacker lately.  

Also, I’ve been too busy to find something funny to write about.  And when I’m not too busy I fall asleep in my chair.

Today’s Exploit:

I went to Oklahoma City one last time.

I had to pack the last few items I left at that apartment and clean the floors and make sure none of the counters had egg yolk cemented to them.

Just kidding.  I’m good at cleaning up the egg yolk before it turns into cement.  Mostly I had to pack and vacuum.  

First I pulled everything from the rooms into the living room.  

Then I covered my eyes and went to find my vacuum so that I could procrastinate the packing part.  

I vacuumed the two bedrooms and the kitchen and the dining room.  

I took a load of things to the Salvation Army while Starla was still empty and went to the store for lunch and Swiffer scrubbies for my kitchen and bathrooms.

After I had lunch sitting on the newly cleaned dining room floor, while shielding my eyes from the pile that was in the living area, I got out the scrubbies and made those floors squeaky clean.  

I was still trying to avoid the hill in the living room, so I borrowed a dolly from the office and took my desk to the dumpster.  I got there just as a nice man was driving by looking for salvageable items.  He liked the desk, so I helped him pack it into his truck.  

When I took the dolly back to the office, I also took a toy dolly for the office manager’s daughters.  Because it hadn’t been out of it’s box in at least 9.72 years.  

Then the only thing left to do was face the mountain.  

I went back inside and nearly cried.  

Then I decided to be tough and take even more stuff to the Salvation Army.  Cause I drive a Civic.  Only so much junk will fit...

The Salvation Army guy was really excited about the vacuum.  

After that I went back, took a deep breath, and started toting stuff down to Starla.  

It was super-engineering to organize all that stuff to fit economically into a small space.  

It was a work of art.

I couldn’t see out the back window.

BUT I DID IT!  

And then I turned in some keys.

Moving Day

I want my next steel toed boots to have red sequins all over them.  Red sequins are way better than pink with orange and blue stitching. 

It’ll be difficult to find something more gaudy and heinous than the ones I have.  But I’m going to try.

Sadly, so far the closest I’ve found is some red daisy vine-y things stitched on the sides.

Today’s Exploit:

I’m moving right now.

No, really.  

I’m packing all my junk into a really big truck, I’m loading Starla onto a dolly to pull behind it.  And then I’m hitting the road.  

I’m driving 7.2 hours, at least, in the hugest truck anyone’s ever let me drive.  

Scary.  The only other big truck I drove was an small engine at the Forest Service.  And I only got to pull that out of the garage.  I drove it a whole 16.7 feet.

And I can’t see behind me.  I don’t like not being able to look in the rearview mirror.  I don’t trust those side ones.  They always tell you they’re morphing things out of perspective, and then expect you to know exactly what’s going on.  

Wish me clear skies and light traffic, so that I can make it on time to get my key.

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 Wasn’t Fast Enough

The other night Don, the company man, was telling me about some wells he drilled.  

They were “Drier than a popcorn fart.”

Today’s Exploit:

The other day Patrick spent most of the afternoon working on his car.  He cleaned the headlights and fixed a loose belt and fiddled with anything he could find under the hood.

He really likes cars.

When he ran out of stuff to do on his he decided that he would work on mine.  He cleaned and cleaned and cleaned my headlights.  He spent the whole time telling me about ways to clean oxidized headlights and the way he preferred to use.  

When he was done he decided that we should take a drive in his car.  And I should drive.

He has a Subaru.  A racecar Subaru.  With lots of numbers and letters after the name.  All of them meaning that it goes really fast.

So I got in and started the car.  And turned around carefully, avoiding all the sticks and roots trying to tear off the undercarriage.  

Then I crept along to the gate guard, who waved us through.

I turned onto the dirt road and we started measuring out the distances that each of us had run.  I was driving along at a moderate pace, somewhere around 35.2 miles per hour.  

Patrick complained that I wasn’t revving the engine high enough.  Also that I wasn’t going fast enough.  

We finally made it to a highway, so I turned onto it and drove along at the speed limit.

He was still complaining.  

So at the next turn he made me get out.  

He was going to show me how you’re supposed to drive a racecar.

We went fast.

Really fast.

And he made fun of me for being too tense.  

But he didn’t slow down, and we made it back to the rig in 5.6 minutes.  

It took me 15.4 minutes to make my segment of the trip.

"Starla Was Really ‘Barassed', as Cupcake would say

I went to the store today for breakfast.  

I ended up with pasta, pasta sauce and pasta soup.

Today’s Exploit:

Did I tell you that my last rig was on the beach?  

It was.

The beach is a windy place.  

The rig is a dusty place.

The rig on the beach is a humid place.

By the time I left the rig Starla was covered in an inch of dust.

Ok, maybe not a whole inch.  

I could barely see out my door windows.  The only thing I could make out through the rearview was headlights late at night.  

I finally broke down and went to a gas station just to use their window washers.  And I dirtied all the soapy water they had getting that mud of the rear windshield.  Also, I got to where I could tell where Starla was by the dirt in the wind.  And the fact that she was the only car that was dirt colored.  

We got home last night.  

We spent most of the drive with people staring at us.  

At first I thought that I was just passing a larger amount of nosy people than usual.  

Then I remembered the color of my car.  I laughed a lot.  Starla blushed.

So, today, when I went to get some milk I decided that I should probably wash her.  Partly because I was getting filthy every time I tried to go somewhere.  And partly because Starla was very self-conscious with all that dust.  

The Office Day

I think I get to be a big kid now and work days more than nights.  

Today’s Exploit:

I had to go into the office to make some logs.  I drove from the rig straight there.  My goal is to get everything done in as little time as possible.  Offices are depressing.  Although, this one was on the better end of that scale.

All my stuff was packed nice and snugly into Starla.  Myrtle was sitting in the passenger seat.  

Ok, she was sitting on the floor of the passenger side because it’s flatter there, and sitting in the seat mooshes her leaves.  

We had a nice 3.89 hour trip to Houston.  Then I packed up my computers and all the papers I collected while at the rig.  My pack ended up being about 48 pounds.  

Betty-Sue is one heavy computer.  And I had 3 tons of papers.  

I locked Starla, but I did a horrible thing.  

I forgot to leave the windows cracked to let Myrtle have some air. 

When I finished my logs and turned everything in I hauled Betty-Sue and all her support gear back to Starla.

Myrtle was dead.

I was sure.  Her leaves were dull and limp, and the stems were bent and lying against the pot.  

I hurried and started Starla and turned the AC on full blast.  This worked to my benefit as much as Myrtle’s, it was 972 degrees inside.

I talked to Myrtle a bit, coaxing her to perk up a bit.  She didn’t listen at first, so I just started driving.  After all, it was another 8.2 hour drive home.  

Luckily Myrtle wasn’t really dead.  She was bouncy as every by the time we got through rush hour traffic.  And nice and shiny, too.

Walking Three Miles in New Sandals = Blisters

Yesterday someone stopped and asked me for directions while I was out running.  I was lucky they narrowed the options down to continuing on this road or going back to the last intersection.  

I have no idea where HWY 77 is.  Sheesh.

Today’s Exploit:

The other day was a casing break for me.  All I had to do was wait on the rig to finish installing casing, cementing and testing.  

So I went to Corpus Christi to explore a bit.  I found a pop-out shade for my window.  Betty-Boop.  I think Starla likes rocking the Betty-Boop look.  They even wear the same colors.  

I also walked along the bay.  They have a nice long path along the water.  I was tempted to join, but it was 11:30 am and 562 degrees.  And I only had sandals.

It was nice enough, with a Slurpee, that I walked for about 2.13 hours.  Naturally I ended up with a few splotches of sunburn where the sunscreen wasn’t up to the battle with the wind.  

By the time I got back to Starla, it was so hot I had to go find an ice cream shop.  And I had to sit outside to eat said ice cream.  Of course I ended up with half the ice cream in my hair and splattered across my face from it getting in my hair.  And dripping down my arm.

And that was my excitement for casing break.  

I Didn’t Check on the Bird

The little dog with the green head? It has an attention span the size of a gnat’s step. I’ll walk across location, and it will see me and start running my direction. But halfway to me it will notice someone or something else and veer off in that direction. I don’t know if it’s capable of completing a thought.

Today’s Exploit:

I hit a bird today.

It almost made me cry.

It was the first animal I have hit while driving Starla. I think Starla wanted to cry too, but probably more because the bird punched her.

I haven’t hit an animal in a vehicle since that bird I hit while driving the van. I think I was 16. Mom was with me. She ducked and flinched more than I did.

Thankfully Starla has no lasting injuries. The bird probably didn’t make it. I didn’t stop to see. It’s a Prison zone, remember?

Myrtle Strikes Again

I’ve been doing this workout for 11 days now and I still don’t have six-pack abs. What’s up with that? That’s why I’m doing this nonsense.

Today’s Exploit:

After Myrtle’s frightening day in the sun she sat on the microwave for nearly a week. In the dark. Because oilfield people are afraid of the sun, apparently. They have all the windows in the entire trailer covered with cardboard and aluminum foil

First she grew really long and leaned a lot so that she could get closer to the smidgen of light that gets into the trailer between the cracks. So I turned her a few times to keep her mostly upright. Then she got so long I decided to cut her back, because she was mostly stems and almost no leaves.

I stuck the tops in water, so all is not lost.

And I kept turning her, but her big leaves began to droop. They were almost vertical when I got smart and took her to the box, where the windows are open. And she gets sunlight nearly all day.

Guess what?

The leaves were back up within 23.5 hours.

I think she’s in her happy place now.

I hate to have to tell her she needs to live in Starla for another long trip.

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!

Additional Telephone Adventures: Starla Series

I just ate fish for breakfast. I know it was evening, but having fried fish when you wake up is just weird.
Also, I'm late because I forgot to hit send.  I can't blame blogger this time.

Today’s Exploit:

Ring Ring

Me: Hello?

Charles: Does that car of yours come with a spare?

Me: Yes, it has a donut.

Charles: Ok, just wondering.

Click

4.8 seconds later

Ring Ring

Me: Hello?

Charles: Those tires are so small, how can you tell if the spare is a donut?

Me: Hahahahahaha

Charles: Ok, just wondering.

Click

5 mintues later

Ring Ring

Me: Hello?

Chris: Hey, did Charles already ask you about your tire?

Me: Yes.

Chris: Ok

Click

2.8 seconds later

Ring Ring

Me: Hello?

Chris: You do have a spare, right?

Me: Yes.

Chris. Ok

Click

They made me suspicious, but I won that round. They didn’t make me go out to check on Starla, to see what they’d done. My nerves were a little wavery, though

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.

Famous Cupcakes

So, for the past month I’ve gotten distracted, and been sidetracked and had writer’s block, otherwise known as “lack of motivation”. But I’m back, I think. And I have a few posts up my sleeve.

Today’s Exploit:

I survived school by the skin of my teeth and was sent straight to a rig. At the gate to the location they stopped me and had me wait for an escort, because this place has ridiculous security. Then they decided that I needed to leave my car at the gate. This was good, because they have “bump gates”, which I’d never seen before. And they probably would have been too much for Starla to handle.

I’ve worked with the guys on this rig before. They are the ones that adopted Little Buddy. (aka Charlie aka Ruby) And the ones of the embarrassing, awkward pork chop dinner. And so on, and so forth.

I hear they’ve spent the past few months harassing Virginia. They wanted her to make those cupcakes that I made for them. Those really good ones. Yeah, the good ones that P.J. made. Unfortunately for Virginia, I made that recipe up, even if they were able to come up with a name for them.

This time I worked with a new crew. One of the ones that worked days last time.

Naturally they were expecting baked goods. And I was sad to inform them that I don’t really do that anymore.

They didn’t believe me. They wouldn’t even take the excuse that I didn’t have my car. Poor Starla was at the gate, 16 miles away. And they didn’t believe that I’d been sent straight from school, and had none of the required items for baking.

They hassled me a lot.

No More Rain.

The first matter of importance today is that my toe hurts. Really bad. Almost going numb bad. And I can’t figure out why. It’s very frustrating.

The second is that my computer needs cleaned. The keys are getting…dusty. Yeah. They’re compiling a lot of dust

Today’s Exploit:

It rained today. I woke up to wind rattling the trailer, and lots of rain, and what could have been thunder (or maybe the forklift dropping some pipe racks). The wind was strong enough that it tore the TV dish off the trailer. The DD panicked a little until the repair guy came, he couldn’t watch his fishing shows.

I panicked too, but it was because last time I was in this crazy state it was under 28.2 inches of water. And I saw on the news that Corpus Christi, TX has LOTS of water. And I talked to my friend there and he said the last rig I was on is under water right now.

Starla, my car, doesn’t like swimming. She doesn’t even like wading. Every time I drive in heavy rain she protests and makes me get new belts. Or she throws a windshield wiper off so that I can’t see.

I don’t want more rain! Hear me? Stop raining until I can go home. Or at least to Oklahoma City. Then I can have a nice bed. And a nice kitchen, that’s fully stocked. And clean.

Although this one is now somewhat clean. I decided today that I’d had enough and cleaned the dishes, and washed the counters and cleaned out the silverware holder. Then I bleached everything. Now I can touch the counter without cringing and running to wash my hands.

PS Dad: Today you should make Tomato Basil Bruschetta.