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07/31/05 |
     
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Julyl 11th -- France and Spain, what can I say? July 12th -- I couldn't help it -- Ian, don't read this! July 22nd -- Aggervating Armando's poor wife. July 23rd -- Single Operator and cool blogs July 29th -- Save a Horse...
So I just had my cat neutered.... Now he's French.... Just kidding!! I just saw this joke and thought it would be a good way to start my entry about my trip to Paris and Spain. For those of you who do now know, I took my first "vacation" this last week. I met a good friend in Paris, Maria Lorente. She now is living in United Arab Emirates in Dubai, but had lived 3-4 years in Paris before that. So I had a personal tour guide that knows the city very well. How cool is that? I love visiting places, but I don't like feeling like a tourist, or doing the stereotypical tourist things. So I got to "experience" Paris much better than any trip I could have arranged on my own. I'll try and hit some highlights: First of all this is arguably the headquarters of Schlumberger, though technically it is in the Northern Antillies, and then subsequent headquarters are split in New York, Houston, The Hague, and Paris. Most of the bigshots live here, and many clients regard this as the headquarters. So I got to meet some of my Parisian coworkers. There is no oil here in economical quantities, so the employees here are not in the "field" like me. Instead they are either business people or design engineers manufacturing the tools that the field engineers use. I was able to see the Eiffel Tower, Champs Elishes St. (spelling?), The Louver (for free!) Notre Dame, Chatue du Luxemborg, Napoleon's Tomb, and most exciting, lost my entire suitcase and all the contents in the arriving flight. This did affect my trip, as I had limited clothes and shoes to work with, and that limited my activities. But I still had a good time. On my birthday, I had what is reputed to be the best Sorbet in the world from the Isle St. Louis. I will say that it was very good sorbet :) You can check out the Paris Pictures page for more. Paris truely is one of the "world's capitals", and it is an amazing city, but for me the highlight of the trip was the Pyrenees. Maria's family has a home in the Spanish Pyrenees (she is originally from Valencia). This is really hard to describe. If you can imagine one of those little tourist towns that are very cute and clean from the Appalachians (like Black Mountain, Dillon, or similar), but make it 1000 years old you could get a picture of what this was like. The home is a hacienda style mountain home right on the river that the local white water rafting companies use. It was so cool just meeting the locals (many of which Maria knows from all the summer vacations she has taken to this town), and experiencing a "Spanish vacation". One day we hiked on a National Park to a mountain lake. At one point we turned a corner on the trail to see a beautiful mountain in the distance. I said, "Maria! Look at that white sand on that mountain!" She responded, "That's snow Boone." My only defense that I can offer is that I was out of my native country, and all the Spanish talk around me had me convinced I was in Mexico, where it does not snow. I promised to include that story, but revenge is sweet: When we were cleaning up on our last day, I asked for a mop for the bathroom. She explained that they have something else in Spain. Something that works very well and she is surprised that she never saw them in the states. After trying to explain what it was, she just went and got it for me. What did she bring me? A mop in a bucket. I briefly explained that I am not aware of a trade embargo on Spanish mops in America, and if there were, mops have already become a staple of the American lifestyle. Check out the Pyrenees Pictures for more.
Ok, here is a quote from ESPN.com relating the events of about a month ago when their projected starting quaterback, Andrew Sexton, was found in face down on campus one morning: On June 14, the 20-year-old Sexton was doused by pepper spray and taken to a hospital after he was found lying in the street and identifying himself as God. His parents released a statement two days later that said drug abuse was not the problem. Classic.
So Armando Vianna and I went to the movies the other night. I was really excited because I had just spent about 2 weeks in Chinook Montana, land of no cell phone coverage. My time out there really is regulated to working and nothing else. I'm happy if I get to sleep in the Chinook Motor Inn. So every time I go out there I feel like a Chinese Laborer on the railroads in the 1800s: I'm in a foreign land, I don't do anything besides work, and I send my money somewhere else. So when I got back to Williston, I went with Armando to see Wedding Crashers. Originally he was going to bring his wife, Elene, who doesn't speak very much English, as well. When I picked him up his wife remained on the balcony to wave goodbye. To aggravate him, I yelled out, "All right! Now we get to go to the strip club!" And I pulled away. A few moments later I realized that my joke was said in English, so I asked him how to say it in Portuguese. He replied without looking at me, "Har har har, Oh man, she knows what "strip club" is." Armando never ceases to crack me up.
Today I did a "single o" job. Which means that I only had one operator instead of the recommended two. This means a little bit more physcial labor, which I actually enjoy. But it also means that when you pull the tool string out of the well, and start to break it down, you have two very different requirements from the company. The company man (in charge of the rig and overall project) wants you to use a little rig time as possible (since rigs cost money, several hundred to several thousand dollars per hour). So I need to go out of the logger and help rig down since there is only one operator. However the geologist and petro-physicist want to get the log online as soon as possible so that they can decide what to do with the well. Well you can't be in both places (on the drill floor helping rig down your tools and in the logger uploading data) at once, so it is always a little stressful because someone is feeling they are not getting fast service. But it went well, and then I came home and found a couple of pretty cool blogs online. What are cool about these blogs is that they are from 24-25 year old grad students from University of Florida. They are into gator athletics, politics, and Christianity -- so we have a lot in common. I'm sure we know a lot of the same people in Gainesville, though I never met these guys. Anyway, here they are: http://emptyfreezer.blogspot.com http://themuddelydrawer.blogspot.com/ And of coarse, Tim McClary revamped his website. It has some great pictures of the MSM program on there. Check it out!
I'm the only John Wayne left in this town... Well I had my "week" off. I worked back-to-back jobs on my first 2 days off, and then on my third left for the Big and Rich concert on 10 hours of sleep in the previous 60. The concert was at the North Dakota State Fair in Minot, ND (about 126 miles away). I went with a coworker, Jarris, and his girlfriend Amanda. We met up with another coworker there, Andy. While having a "Big and Rich" time, I made several observations for anyone who is planning on seeing a country act at the North Dakota State Fair. 1. Try to stand between someone who is smoking, and the cowboy who gets a little *too* into the show. You know the guy I'm talking about, the sexually frustrated man who comes alone and yells at random intervals throughout the show without realized just how high pitched he really is. This way, when he gives one of his many ear-peircing "woo-hoos!" you instinctively turn your head to protect your ear-drums to get a face full of winston lite. 2. Get behind the girl who likes to show her chest from atop her boyfriend's shoulders during the one religious song every country act is required to sing by law ("Holy Water" in the case of Big and Rich). 3. Expect a fight -- several of them. Why I feel convinced that I am the person to break up fights I'll never know...but it is fun to try to calm down big, bad, drunk men. 4. Look for the oldest woman ever to see a concert on top of her husband's shoulders. I am not exaggerating -- this woman was every bit of 65! As impressed as I was that she was there jamming out on her husbands shoulders, I also gained a healthy bit of respect for the man at their age able to perform such a feat. 5. Eat a truck stop after the concert. This completes the cultural experience. Order the kneophela soup, but expect them to be out. 6. Look for the youngest girl to be wearing the sexually implicit, "Save a Horse -- ride a cowboy" t-shirt. I found a two 3 year-olds tied for the honor. Though I guess I should be rewarding the parents with the foresight to start dressing their daughter as a slut at such a young age. Ok, in all reality I'm glad that I went and had a pretty good time. Since I was driving my friends took "liberty" with their drinks, and the conversations we had on the way out were pretty amusing: Amanda: "Boone, I noticed you don't cuss." Jarris: "Bull sh-- Yeah, he never says f*#@" Amanda: "That shows you're educated!" Jarris: "Bull sh-- Hey! I have a diploma!" Amanda: "Boone has a master's degree." Jarris: "Bull sh-- Mine's from high school!" Throughout the evening, "bull sh--" became other animals sh--. The next stage was "horse sh--". A little later: Boone: "Amanda, where's Jarris going?" Amanda: "Oh, he likes to pee on the tires of the display combines after the show." Boone: "Jarris! Don't do that, come on, we'll go get some food." Amanda: "Jarris always does stupid things when he gets drunk. He likes to talk to trash cans." Jarris: "That's (the aforementioned) horse sh--. I never did that." Amanda: "He has whole conversations with them." Jarris: "Just that once. And only because it took my wallet." Amanda: "How about that time at the Ramada? All your friends said you were talking to the garbage can in your hotel room." Jarris: "Horse sh--. I was not." Amanda: "Why would they say that you were then?" Jarris: "Because they were drunk too!"
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This site was last updated 07/31/05
