I’ve Been Everywhere

This first video is the original by Brian Burns. The video at the end was shot by someone who visited every town in the song on a motorcycle! Actually, it seems I’ve Been Everywhere (in Texas, that is), has inspired many a road trip.

After a year and a half in Texas, I was surprised at how many of theses places, that even most Texans haven’t heard of, I lived in or been through.

Remember, as with most videos, once you start playing it, you can click on the partial square in the bottom right corner of the video and it will full screen.

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I’ve been everywhere in the song, almost, and tomorrow I’ll be somewhere else.

We’re done here drilling here in Concrete. There are still legions of trucks coming and going as we begin to rig down.

Tomorrow we head SW (out in the country between Beeville and Kenedy) about 75 miles. This would be kind of bad news to us overheated Yankees in Texas, in the Spring (which is really summer since it’s already 90′s every day), except that we’re moving with the rig and we have such a great group to work with!

We’ve been on the same ranch (2 different holes) since March 5th.

The day we moved to this site, it looked like this:

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I’ve been to Waco, Hico, Hondo, Navasota, Winnsboro, Jacksboro, Hillsboro, Santa Rosa, Austin, Houston, Galveston, Texarkana, Frisco, Buffalo, Conroe, Corsicana,
Goliad, Groesbeck, Glen Rose, Red Oak, Post Oak, Live Oak, Lone Oak, no joke…

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Before long the pad was filled to overflowing.

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I’ve been to Kruegerville, Pflugerville, Van Horn, Val Verde, Brackettville, Bartonville, Beeville, Bulverde, Bear Creek, Cedar Creek, Mill Creek, Mineola, Maypearl, Monahans, Telephone, Tuscola, Redwater, Round Rock, Round Top, Round Lake, Sour Lake, Southlake, Spring Lake, for Pete’s sake…

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I’ve been to Greenville, Gatesville, Gainesville, Alameda, Kerrville, Kellyville, Bastrop, Benavides, Somerville, Smithville, Stephenville, Prairie View, Luckenbach, Longview, Plainview, Idalou, Justin, Junction, Panorama, Pasadena, Angelina and Lorena…see what I mean-a…

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Two nights ago the semi lights stretched for miles waiting for their turn:

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Now let me see I’ve been to Valley Mills, Pine Mills, Dime Box, Duncanville, New Home, New Hope, New Deal, Liberty Hill, Rockport, Rock Creek, Bridgeport, Brownwood, Cleburne, Comanche, Cut & Shoot, Cottonwood, Bayview, Bayside, Baytown, Bay City, Falls City, Center City, Bridge City, what a pity…

It’s wildly busy tonight. I’ve had about 40 trucks in the past hour so I’m giving up on the computer and shifting my attention to tucking away fragile things.

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We’ve packed up, backed up and done everything but hitch up. Tomorrow begins another grand adventure!

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I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly

I know an old lady who swallowed a fly
I don’t know why she swallowed the fly
Perhaps she’ll die

I know an old lady who swallowed a spider
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly
But I don’t know why she swallowed the fly
Perhaps she’ll die

Well, you know the rest. If you don’t, I’ve added a video of Judy Collins singing this on Sesame Street.

I’m feeling a lot like the old lady in the song. I’ve never swallowed a fly, as far as I know,  just a few moths and at least a half of a spider, but I am combating entomophobia with a touch of DOP.

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I don’t know what these are but we’ve had thousands of them!

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Two different conditions are recognized that relate to an inordinate fear of arthropods like insects and spiders. Entomophobia (“entomo” = insect + “phobia” = fear) refers to an unreasonable fear of real arthropods. The key here, as with other phobias, is that the fear involves a real stimulus, in this case an insect or spider, encountered in everyday activities. For example, a spider found inside the home might trigger this intense fear reaction.

A condition called delusions of parasitosis (DOP), or delusional parasitosis, on the other hand, is a severe, debilitating reaction to an imagined infestation. Delusions are a mistaken belief and in this case the person believes, wrongly, that they are infested with an insect or mite, or that they are being repeatedly bitten.

~ Jack DeAngelis, PhD, OSU Entomologist

My latest troubles began with the bee-like thing with pincers that nested in my hair while I was logging in a truck and burrowed into my head. The harder I pulled at him, the deeper he went. I had a sore head for days. He’s looking a little worse for wear in this photo. I took a picture in case I broke out in hives or went into anaphylactic shock (which was more likely to happen from eating the crawfish, but still…). That way if  Heidi found me passed out on the floor, she would know what bit/stung/pinched me.

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Of course, there was that cricket the size of a Dorito thumping the mouse trap.

The last few nights have heightened my entomophobia. There was the furry spider on the door, the creepy spider with white spots that lives on the night lights and the red spider that spins in the wheel well at night.

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Then, night before last, it was the giant winged thing that came in stealth-fully (again, probably in my hair). I’m beginning to redefine hair-net as: my hair that nets every winged creature! He came in quietly. I didn’t notice. Hours later, he dropped down on my head from somewhere while I was reading. I can’t tell you how much I hate arthropods dropping on my head.

You can’t really get a true idea of this from the picture but he/she was about the size of a monarch butterfly when it spread it’s wings… and u g l y!

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He fell on my head. I jumped out of the chair. Henry flew out of his bed. The giant flying thing went all kamikaze on us – bouncing off the walls and ceiling and even under the table.

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Henry isn’t much of a mouser but he does go after bugs, but this one was too much for him. He couldn’t get to it. I was disappointed to wake up and have Heidi say the winged creature disappeared shortly after she got up. He resurfaced just  few hours ago. I was a little more prepared tonight. I knocked him out with one of Heidi’s Crocs before he could get fully airborne.

I carried him outside.

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We’re pulling out of the hole right now which mean there were non-stop cement trucks and tankers. By the time I’d logged everyone and returned inside and sat down to read again, my DOP kicked in big time.

Although I knew it wasn’t possible, I felt the giant winged thing crawling down my back.

It wasn’t possible. It wasn’t that giant winged thing. It was a this giant winged thing.

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I’d rather have DOP, but I don’t think I do. So far, everything I’d hoped I was just imagining was crawling on my skin, was real and worse than I’d imagined.

I may have entomophobia but there’s something about being phobic that implies it’s a little irrational and I don’t think that’s that case either.

I think I just have boundary issues.

And, all things considered, I think they’re pretty reasonable. I’m saving the snakes and frogs for another day. I actually love the frogs but I wish they’d eat the giant winged things.

It’s supposed to be in the 90′s this week. Still, a hoodie is starting hold a certain appeal!

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Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You

I wrote a post back in February called Jambalaya  which was really about alligators and the bayou with a great video of Hank Williams and real pirogues but no actual jambalaya.

Today I’m writing a post called Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You, which really is about Jambalaya and Crawfish and the kind of creepy feeling I get when my food watches me while I eat.

This past week, here in the no longer-a-town of Concrete, Texas, we’ve been transported back to the bayou. We have several guys on the rig that are from Louisiana. Our Directional Driller called us down for heaping portions of his homemade jambalaya. It was better than a biscuit buttered on both sides (they have a lot of biscuit sayings here, but no biscuits so far, just a lot of beans).

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The meat in this batch of jambalaya was sausage and chicken or pork, I’m not sure which. It was either the white meat or the other white meat. In any case, the jambalaya didn’t have any eyes. It was like eating regular, non-accusatory food.

Last week I experienced my first crawfish cookout. The caterer drove 14 hours from New Orleans with fresh crawfish and let me tell you, they made quite a splash! For those of you who, like me, have roots about as southern as central Indiana, you’ll get that this was a unique experience for me.

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Seafood has never seen me eat it until I moved to the south. It began in February in Galveston with the Granddaddy Lobster Crab pot when we did Eat at Joe’s, but that didn’t prepare me for the crawfish fest.

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Pardon the way that I stare.
There’s nothing else to compare.
The sight of you leaves me weak.
There are no words left to speak.
But  if you feel like I feel when I peel you I feel.
Please let me know that it’s real. This all is entirely surreal.
You’re just too creepy to be true.
Can’t take my eyes off of you.

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The fact that I’d never eaten crawfish was a source of both amazement and amusement here among these southerners. Heidi, who begged off due to allergies (not entirely untrue – she hates most all seafood and probably would get sick) left me to fend for myself.

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Some of the guys are a little shy about having their picture posted for a variety of reasons. Clay, our mud engineer, doesn’t mind and you can see everyone was feted with a turkey pan full of crawfish and plenty of extra Cajun seasoning.

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The Company Man called me in for a crawfish cracking lesson. As it turns out, this was entirely necessary since, instinctively, I would have aimed for the wrong end.

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There’s really quite a lot of technique involved: breaking off the tail, removing the first band, grabbing the meat and shaking it (really, no kidding, shaking it loose).  After Jimbo showed me about 10 times, I made one successful attempt and returned to the RV with my own turkey pan (despite my protests that I didn’t need nearly that many).

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Heidi ate the corn and potatoes while I began the task of shelling my dinner. Shelling crawfish isn’t anything like shelling peas, which I’ve done quite a lot of.

I took a nice before photo.

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Thirty plus minutes and a torn up thumb later, I had my dinner ready.

When there aren’t any fish in the sea, a crawfish can pass off for a fish. ~ Lech Walesa

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There you have it.  A turkey platter of crawfish reduced to about 10 oz of meat. Amazing! It was an adventure to be sure!

You’re just too creepy to be true.
Can’t take my eyes off of you.
You’d be like heaven to touch so icky to touch.
I wanna Don’t want to hold you so much.
At long last love has arrived. Sorry you didn’t survive.
And But I thank God I’m alive.
You’re just too creepy to be true.
Can’t take my eyes off of you.

With apologies to Frankie Vali…

A River Runs Through It

A river runs through it, or at least it did … all night last night.

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And all night a solo vacuum truck came and went, hauling the river away.

When the CM said he had a vac truck coming in to do some clean up, he wasn’t kidding!

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It worked kind of like a gigantic shop vac, sucking up thousands of gallons of water.

And all night, the guys on the rig continued to work. It’s such a regular part of life on a drilling rig, no one even comments.

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Except me, since I’m not quite as Texas-seasoned as the rest. I surely appreciated  having an automatic awning. When it wasn’t windy, it helped. When the wind picked up, it came back in.

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The rain stopped just in time for Heidi to meet 15 semis of casing  yesterday morning. By evening, most of the remaining river had seeped into the greedy Texas ground.

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During the storm, not being remotely mechanical, I worked in the dark, in the rain, without outside lights or a bell. We’re so close to the rig, the lack of lights wasn’t a big deal.

But no bell meant I had to keep the shade up all night. I felt a little like a mannequin with poor posture and an ugly orange vest in a window display after closing time at Macy’s. Not that anyone was looking.

I know how to reset the switch on the generator. And I did. Several times, but it would trip instantly. I’m easily resigned to fate.

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Heidi, on the other hand, lives to problem solve.

By the time I got up yesterday afternoon, the problem was solved.

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I know it worked because it stormed again tonight and the lights stayed on and the bell rang at many appropriate times!

The bugs in the above picture are kind of like Texas-sized flying ants and are so thick the ground looks like it’s moving.

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Two-legged creatures we are supposed to love as we love ourselves.  The four-legged, also, can come to seem pretty important.  But six legs are too many from the human standpoint.  ~ Joseph W. Krutch

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Thanks to all of you gate guards who kept in touch. In spite of the wind and the warnings, it sounds like everyone came through it OK.

And so ended another action packed day here on the ranch.

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In a couple more days, we’ll be back up to our ankles in caliche. If we could just get the vac driver to swing back around for that:

He’d be riding a gravy train with biscuit wheels.                              (odd Texas saying)

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When your dreams turn to dust, vacuum.

Warning! Tornados! Floods! Lightening Strikes!

Well, this is interesting.

We’re currently under:

1. A Tornado Warning

2. A Tornado Watch

3. A Severe Thunderstorm Warning

4. A Severe Thunderstorm Watch

5. A Flood  Warning

6. A Flood Watch

7. A Hail Warning (but not Hail Watch).

Seriously? I don’t know if the weather service just can’t make up its mind or if it’s because we’re in the thick of it right now with a lot more on the way? I’m afraid it’s the latter

Y’all take care out there.

You other gate guards – sure would like to hear that you’re OK.

Bob and Gabby, I know there was a tornado near you.  And John and Terry, sounds like things were rough in Tilden. We hear they’ve shut down some of the rigs around Karnes City.

Not ours, so far…

The little hummer seems to be undeterred, though! He must be a Jim Rohn fan.

How long should you try? Until. ~ Jim Rohn

It’s a Man’s World

If the world was perfect, it wouldn’t be.    ~ Yogi Berra

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To quote the late James Brown, it’s a man’s world, at least it is in the oil/natural gas industry.

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According to Catalyst it looked something like this in 2011:

Male-Dominated Industries in Canada and the U.S.
Industry	Women’s Share in Canada, 201110	Women’s Share in U.S., 201111
Agriculture	29.5%	N/A
Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing & Hunting	N/A	24.7%
Construction	11.2%	9.2%
Fishing, Hunting, and Trapping	16.0%	13.7%
Forestry and Logging with Support Activities	14.8%	N/A
Mining (including oil and gas extraction)	19.0%	12.1%
Utilities	24.7%	22.2%

Women in Management in Male-Dominated Industries

Those stats are just management. By the time you get to a drilling rig, or FRAC or production or completion, the percentage of female employees is next to nil.

I just want to thank everyone who made this day necessary.     ~ Yogi Berra

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We have deep depth.  ~ Yogi Berra

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Gate guards, which are made up of about 55% men and 45% women, don’t count since we’re Security not Mining. There are still several men who work gates solo but only a couple of women. We’ve met  two other women teams -  a mother and daughter and two that are good friends. Needless to say, in this man’s world, men do not work in teams at a gate. Can you imagine 2 men living in an RV? They can’t even sit next to each other at the movies!

If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else. ~ Yogi Berra

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So yes, it’s a man’s world.

He hits from both sides of the plate. He’s amphibious.             ~ Yogi Berra

In a year and a half, we’ve worked with 1 woman who was our geologist, 1 woman who was a safety trainer and maybe 2 or 3 female semi drivers.

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Other than the women in sales, we live in a man’s world, deep in the heart of very macho Texas!

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It ain’t the heat, it’s the humility. ~ Yogi Berra

Heidi and I spoke to groups of health care professionals for nearly 25 years,  90% of whom were women.  Yogi got this one right – at least partially.

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It isn’t the heat (or the gender), it’s the humility, the attitude, that makes the difference between people who are good to work for and with, and those who can make the day really unpleasant.

These guys get a lot of credit. I know it was a shock when their gate guards arrived in this man’s world and we were both women! We’ve gotten used to each other over the last 7 weeks. They’ve decided we’re “family”.  It’s mostly a man’s world, but it’s our world, too.

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Mayday! on May Day!

Yesterday was May 1st. That means yesterday was May Day, except in Texas, where not one single person that came through our gate (maybe 150 or so all told) had ever heard of May Day.

Heidi baked a big batch of warm cookies for the 5:30 meeting. We cheerfully passed out candy to everyone who came through in, greeting them with a hearty Happy May Day!

It quickly become apparent that no one had ever heard of May Day. Is this just a Midwestern thing? May baskets made with pipe-cleaner handles, filled with candy and sometimes flowers that you hang on the front door knob or leave on the Welcome mat in the case of no knob. Then you ring the doorbell and hide in the bushes until your friend opens the door and sees their gift!

I did it. My kids did it. My Facebook friends assure me that it’s still happening in Iowa, but in Texas, not so much. Clearly there’s no point in Tap to create event here. We did have one Californian who’d heard of it but he was probably a Midwest transplant.

Anyway, everyone was happy to eat the candy and cookies and it didn’t really matter to them what the occasion was. They did make it known that they know what Cinco de Mayo is. They’ll be pretty disappointed when they come to the gate on Saturday if they’re expecting Margaritas!

Last night, Henry and I were having a Mayday of our own.

 Mayday is an emergency procedure word used internationally as a distress signal. It derives from the French venez m’aider, meaning “come help me”.  ~Wikipedia

If you’re a regular reader, you know, we’ve had some mighty mouse duels. Heidi – 14, Mice-0 at last count. Henry and I have enjoyed weeks of peace until last night. We both heard it at the same time. As usual, the sound started in his food dish.

Henry, who had been long asleep in his bed, switched to his high alert mode, ears straight up. He took a few tentative steps toward his dish. I took a few steps toward his dish. The sound changed from the rattle of dog food to the familiar stuck in the sticky trap thumping.

At this point, Henry changed course. He’s a perfect, certified, pet therapy dog. He’s not a watch dog or a mouser.

I’ve never seen him hide between the footstool and the chair before. This caused me to become a little alarmed at just what was thumping the trap up and down under the cabinets. But not alarmed enough to look. Just alarmed enough to build a protective barrier to prevent it from thumping out onto the kitchen floor.

I knew a mouse could easily squeeze between the water jugs, but I didn’t think he’d be able to drag the trap through. For, oh I suppose an hour and a half, the thumping persisted. Henry continued to look alarmed behind the footstool. I turned on yesterday morning’s GMA to drown out the sound.

I made periodic trips to the coffee pot to make sure the mouse was still safely ensconced. You can’t really do catch and release with mice and the only traps that have worked for us down here (and believe me, we’ve tried them all) are the sticky ones.

When we caught the first mouse under the sink, I was going to take it out, but I saw it’s heart beating and I couldn’t finish the job. Heidi has no problem with this whatsoever and considers every mouse caught a personal victory.

I was relieved when the thumping stopped. This was a change in the pattern. It usually goes on night. This mouse had also been blessedly mute (not a bit of squeaking).

I decided that either the mouse was very, very tired or sleeping or inexplicably dead. I slowly pulled away the water bottles.

A cricket almost the size of a Dorito had been thumping the trap all over the floor.

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Seriously, don’t let anyone tell you everything isn’t bigger in Texas. We need a mouse trap for our bugs!

The Derrick is Up!

The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more.          ~ Jonas Salk

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Isn’t that the truth! The huge job of getting this massive drilling rig up and going is done, which simply means the work kicked into a different gear.

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But before I get to that, here are some final photos of rigging up!

The guy front and center is most of these pictures is our safety man who watched every moment of the operation.

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And here she is, upright and ready to for action!  There’s always a big cheer that rocks the dry Texas tierra when the derrick is finally in place!

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Because no one was allowed on site unless they were a part of the rigging up work, Heidi guarded the gate from the middle of the road. Talk about a seat with a view!

You can observe a lot by just watching. ~ Yogi Berra  

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Henry VIII helped, sort of.

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Finally, a few behind beneath the scenes shots. Unlike our Forest Oil rigs where they used cranes, Marathon has giant hydraulic lifts so the whole operation was surprising quiet and smooth.

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Even with the best technology it still takes a whole lot of man power!

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The flame you can see just over the tree line in the picture below is the Flare from the burn off at the FRAC site, a mile in the other direction on our ranch.

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The first two  pictures are at look at the FRAC when it was still in full swing and the third is how it looks now with the Flare.

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The last task that really signifies that the derrick is raised and ready is to place the flags on the dog house.

Inside the doghouse is the Knowledge Box which contains things like drilling reports and the pipe tally and other things I don’t know anything about.

I would like to have my own personal Knowledge Box for this job. It would  contain things like a super sonic device guaranteed to ward off  rattlesnakes, tarantulas, scorpions, caliche, coyotes AND a FRS  (Facial Recognition System).

I see so many faces in a day/night that sometimes I feel like I’m watching Michael Jackson’s Black or White video where one face morphs into another. I really hate it when I don’t remember someone’s  name.

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A couple dozen exhausted men and a job well done, by evening we were ready for the onslaught the next day would bring!

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Don’t ever become a pessimist… a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events.  ~ Robert A. Heinlein

So on that happy note, I wish you a grand new week and an oil well in your back yard!

Riggin’ Up Day 3

The best way to appreciate your job is it imagine yourself without one.  ~ Oscar Wilde

There are days, like when it was 97 degrees this week and I couldn’t get the winged stinging bug out of my t-shirt and I realized that the white stuff in my coffee was caliche, not creamer, that I have to remind myself to appreciate my job. Most days though, I know we have a good thing going.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I’m going to post some still shots, too.

WP refuses to let me order the pictures so the raising of the derrick is a little random here.

We’ve been drilling for three days now and all seem to be going well.

Rig Move Day 2 Photos

The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close-up. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

OK – that’s probably true so I’ll try to share a mix of both the big picture and some close up shots. Hopefully, you’ll be able to click on any of these images and take a closer look around.

Because the gate is busy and the computer and I are still at odds over posting photos – tonight will be a few more shots from Day 2. I’ll try to get a final Day 3 slide show in the hopper. I made a dozen attempts last night but the pictures kept floating off into… well, I don’t know where. One minute they were here and the next they weren’t there.

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As you can see, the derrick comes in backwards.

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It gets put together like an everything is bigger in Texas Lego.

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This gives you a bit of perspective on just how huge everything is.

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Either you run the day or the day runs you.  ~ Jim Rohn

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Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others. ~ Winston Churchill

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Every morning at 5:30 and each evening at 5:30, there’s a meeting of the minds. The day shift and night shift rig crew, the rig manager, the safety guy and the day and night Company Men talk.

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Heidi made creamed filled cupcakes for their meeting. It didn’t take any time for them to go through 2 dozen cupcakes!

The guy in the white shirt is our head Company Man, Jimbo. He’s the second CM we’ve worked for from Louisiana and both were named Jimbo! Funny! Must be a common name there. Next week he says we’re having a craw-fish cookout.

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Well, that brings us to the close of the second day. One more slide show to go to show you the last day of rigging up.

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Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in, forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day… ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The rest of that sentence -  Tomorrow is a new day and you shall begin it well and serenely -  just seemed a little discordant with life on an oil rig.

Although, when no one is snaring wild hogs 10 feet from my window; the cows aren’t eating the satellite cables; the donkey isn’t guarding the gate; there aren’t any tarantulas in the crock pot or rattlesnake loose in the truck bed, it’s pretty serene. Surreal sometimes, but serene.