Coffee and Cigarettes

Apparently I am not so great at being a blogger. I am constantly taking mental notes on the things that happen in my daily life and thinking "I could write a post about that" or "I should mention that in a post." But then I get 30 core chips and spend the rest of my shift giving myself a bruise on my hand grinding them up in the mortar and pestle. Or I get back to the hotel and find that all of the great ideas I had during the 45 minute drive have flown away at the site of my bed. More commonly, I sit down in the "lab" trailer to write something, and find myself with writers block. Perhaps it is caused by the nearly constant high pitched whine of the XRD, or the every 9 minutes, 6 second spurts of the air compressor turning on. It turns out the only thing I have actually written in the last month or so was a reading list for a co-worker, and even that was hard to force out.

Since my last post I have been on 2 more jobs and currently am living on site for the first time. In addition I have been home for 5 days in the last 3 months, none of them consecutively and was just in my closest college friends' wedding. This was considered my vacation, but if you've ever been in a big wedding you know that it is more stress than vacation!

I have continued to learn a ton. On my last 2 jobs before this one the client was taking core samples. This means that they were doing core runs. What this entails is drilling with a coring bit which takes core of, typically, about 3 inches in diameter. Usually core runs are done in sections of 90 feet. And in order to perform a core run the drilling bit is switched for the coring bit and the core hand takes over the driller's job for the duration of the core run. Once the run is completed the pipe is tripped out with the core and the core is then chopped into 3 foot sections. The core comes out of the ground in an aluminum tube and is capped on each end of the three foot sections with a rubber cap which is sealed using duct tape. For our analysis we take  chips off the end of the cores and grind them up to run through the machines. This is nice because instead of showing a range of 30 or 60 feet the way cuttings do, the chips pinpoint the values at an exact depth. It's not nice because they are a little harder to crush up and more tends to go wrong during a coring run than during normal drill ahead operations. On a job in Oklahoma this is exactly what happened. Everything was going smoothly, and very quickly until they got ready to start coring. Then, everything that could go wrong did. The hole started collapsing, then the began to lose circulation, so they changed the mud mixture and started adding diesel to it. Then during the first of 5 scheduled core runs of 90 feet they broke off after 7 feet. This well continued in much the same fashion. A lot of waiting, for very little. I read Anna Karenina in about 2 days.

Now, my first experience living on site. I have to say, I pretty much hate it. This well is also going very slowly, right now they are running intermediate casing, which means several days of sitting and waiting. To top it off, my coworker on this job is so awkward and boring and messy! He hasn't done a single dish since I've been here! (5 days and counting!) I may not do my dishes right away at home, but in a small trailer with a small shared space I do them immediately. This is the first time that I have actively disliked my coworker. Even on other jobs when they may have been someone I did not see eye to eye with politically or religiously, I have always found common ground and grown to genuinely like and enjoy each person I have previously worked with. Not so on this job! I realize now how important it is, especially when living with someone, to have someone you can talk with and enjoy passing time with.

So I have been passing the last few days writing, finally. Perhaps it is the ultimate boredom of being stuck out here in central Texas with no one to talk to. But the block is slowly melting away. Literally as it is 105+ everyday!

Peace out!

Pinky