04/28/05

April 2005

April 7th 2005 -- Living on a border

April 27th 2005 -- snow and work

April 7th 2005

Nothing "fun" happened today except that I worked only a couple of miles from the Canadian border. It was a horizontal well -- so we were probably stealing their oil :) I was picking up Canadian radio stations and couldn't use my cell because it was picking up a Canadian cell tower. We did stop at the "CanAm" gas station. Anyone with a little common sense can figure out the name. Here's a pic of it.

This is my 4th job in 7 days, and there might be two more tomorrow night and the next morning. If that's the case I'll have done 6 jobs in just under 9 days. That's pretty busy considering the jobs last between 10-20 hours each (most of these have been 12-15). I've been living a blessed life up here, because the activity has been pretty slow -- but it's starting to warm up again.

In other good news the LA Lakers are having one of their worst seasons ever. :) Well I need to get some sleep. Take it easy my peeps!

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April 27th 2005

Well this has been my busiest week in North Dakota of the year. I'm actually a little scared to sit down and add up the hours that I've worked this week, but a rough low estimate is 110 and a rough high estimate is 130. I also had my two worst jobs yet. The week started on a small well (about 5500 feet deep) about 5 miles from the Canadian Border where Montana and North Dakota meet. The well was poorly drilled, and I couldn't drop my tools on my wireline cable to the bottom. We tried off and on for 2.5 days before the company cancelled the logs. One night we got to stay in a hotel! (vs. working through the night and sleeping naps in the pickup truck.) It was in Plentywood Montana. There's no wood whatsoever. I imagine the founding fathers were relatives of Erick the Red who named "Green"land.

My "other" worst job ever was on a much deeper well, 10,610 feet. When we started logging at 8:00 PM, I only had 10 hours of sleep in the previous 60 hours.  Once we finished at midnight, I had do to this computation with the data that I had never done before. And I couldn't get the data correct. I tried till 7:00 am where, for the first time ever, I had to walk over to the company man without information. They had just spent probably over 75,000 in attempts to get this data and I was the one who couldn't deliver. It sucked. After sleeping for 4 hours I discussed the job with my boss where we found out that I was trying to do the impossible, and that was why it would not work. So I gave them what data I could generate, just before I left for my next job, a very deep well of 12,600. I got back from that one this morning around noon, and got to "sleep" from 5 to 9 pm. I just finished watching a basketball game, so adding up, that means that I have gotten about 18 hours of sleep since saturday morning, 5 days ago...  Ok, I'm starting to break my rule about not adding up my hours :)

In more "exciting" news, it's been snowing here for the past couple of days. That's right, it's APRIL 27th here just like it is anywhere else, except it's SNOWING!

Anyone who reads my posts or knows me as a person understands my unexplainable hatred for the LA Lakers. You cannot imagine the disappointment that I felt when I drove by the Williston High School to see the name of their basketball gym. The Phil Jackson Field House. That's right, he is from a small town just outside of Williston (ha ha! "small" town "outside" of Williston! I crack myself up -- Williston's only 13,000 but I'm already thinking of it as the big city) and he went to Williston High school.