Rooooaaaaadtriiiiiiiiiiip!

So Saturday was essentially all driving. Conway to Little Rock airport to Houston. It was just a long day on the road. I got to Houston about 5 (yea I didn't get lost or anything--miracle!) or so and was immediately greeted by my homegirl, Jennifer. Missed the crap outta that girl fo realz. We spent the rest of that evening on various shenanigans including, red wine + peach schnapps (which is DELICIOUS and DEADLY), dinner at Alexander the Great (a Greek place around the corner--I had braised lamb shank and it was delightful!), a run to Walgreens for CHEAP wine (we only had that one bottle which was NOT sufficient to meed the needs of all of us, let alone the new wine fetish of Julia and Jen), and drinking said cheap wine while we lounged around in Jen and Julia's room listening to some choice tunes. Those in attendance included Jen and Julia (obviously), Maria, Anjelica, Aislinn, myself, AAAAAND.... Donnald! That's right, the man we all know and love, the pimp the men envy, the one and only Rap Master D! Also known as D Money, he is so fly he can get his nails painted pink and have no one even dare THINK of revoking his man card (lest he shame them to their core with his lyrical stylings). It was a great night.

Today we spent the whole day at a race track. Not the ponies but go karts! It was a long day because there were so many (70) of us but it was a good time. We got there at approximately noon and the final race wasn't until 6 (a whole 5 hours after we began... we had to "warm up" and then qualify...intense!) so we didn't leave until... something like 8ish. Woof. When we finally made it back to the Double Tree we ate some of the tastiest pizza ever and then we all pretty much dispersed to go either to bed or to work on our presentations (don't worry I'm done). It was just a fun day but I'm wiped, however my devotion to you dear readers has kept me up long enough to do some behind the scenes reporting. You're welcome.

Tomorrow: presentations and then one of our infamous dinners on the company tab. I'm hoping my liver can handle it...it's kinda out of practice after this very lame summer. I'll let you know how it goes... eventually.

In unrelated news I finished my first recreational book in ages. State of Fear by the almighty Michael Crichton. Very good. Thought provoking. I recommend it.

And finally we'll wrap up tonight with the usual countdown:

Houston: NOW!!!

Manhattan: 4 days!!!

SFKS: ONE week!!! (MOM IT'S SO CLOSE!)

Goodnight and good luck.

The beginning of the end

Today I slept in, made pancakes, I went to get my car looked at (Thanks Toyota dealership!), went to the yard to register all my upcoming travels with Journey Management (if you actually want to know what that is we'll talk about it later... it's not real exciting), packed up almost all of my stuff, read a lot of my book (first recreational book I've read in... I don't even know how long which makes me sad), got a manicure (some femininity needed to be recovered lest we risk me remaining oil field trash forever), and wrote out my directions to Houston (yes I said wrote out...some of us don't have a Garmin, ok?).

Tomorrow we start our journey bright and early tomorrow morning at 7:30 by swinging by the yard to drop off our apartment keys, key cards, and internet cord and then it's off to Little Rock to drop off Anjelica at the airport. Once that mission is accomplished, I will ride off into the sunrise on my trusty steed (or in my maroon Camry...whatever) toward's Houston. I'll arrive (in theory) eight hours later assuming I don't get lost (riiiight). Don't worry too much about me in my travels, for I will be stopping every two hours as prescribed by my Journey Management plan and checking in with dispatch at each stop. Gonna be a good day...

Goodbye Conway! Goodbye Arkansas! Hello Houston!

I am oriented!

What a week. Woof. We got geared up and learned all about safety procedures, protocol, and the lifestyle we are about to be submerged in. Talk about overload.

We started every day by getting on the bus at 6:30 (except that first day...) and we ended at 5(ish...) and then went to eat dinner with the recruiters. Our days basically didn't end until 9 or 1o pm. We've spent considerable amounts of time on the three shuttle buses contracted out to cart our sorry little hind-ends around and we've spent even more time listening to PowerPoint presentations about things like lifting with your legs and not your back or only driving for a maximum of 10 hours in a 24 hour period (but never between 11 pm and 5 am!).

Don't get me wrong, it's been pretty fun. Our dinners include an open bar (can you say drunk interns?) because the company culture boils down to "work hard" (SO hard) "and play harder" (no kidding). We also do have very minute times to ourselves (between shuttle bus rides) in which we can roam the mall or take a much needed nap. We have started to get to know one another (at least as much as possible between listening to talks about coveralls when there are 76 interns...) and we are "gelling" well. Seriously, I have never seen such a large group of people our age that fit together so nicely. There aren't really cliques (yet) and even when there seems to have formed a conversation group, we all are pretty comfortable joining in. It's kinda weird. I like it. I've made friends with people from Alaska, New York, California, Michigan, Tennessee, and West Virginia (to name just a few) and I've only had to endure two Dorothy jokes so far.

And then there's the SWAG (easy trigger, I mean Stuff We All Get)! I am now the proud (yes proud--I mean that) owner of two sets of blue Tyvek suits (for those of you who may not know: flame resistant coveralls in a perfectly smurf-y hue), a green hardhat (also excited about that), Red Wing boots, prescription safety goggles (they look HOT), and a sweet duffel bag to keep it all in. I have yet to don them all at once but I assure you that when I do, there will be photographic evidence. I'll probably fall in line and start referring to all of this as my PPE (personal protective equipment) as is the trend, so heads up on that one.

We are treated not so much as interns as prospective employees so they aren't sugar coating anything. This job can eat people alive. The hours are crazy (they OWN you for the first three to five years) and the work is DEMANDING (physically, mentally, emotionally...). I may spend several days on site and that means sleeping in a truck whenever I can catch a few minutes and peeing outside (no proper potty on an oil platform). As a woman I've been prepared to be treated as somewhat of an oddity and talked to as if these "roughnecks" (not people from our company but the actual work horses of an oil platform) had never seen a girl before. Should I chose to adopt this lifestyle as my career, and should I last for those first three to five years, I could be moved and placed in virtually any job, in any country in the world. I could become a sales rep, recruiter, or design engineer in France, Chad, or Venezuela. They work with you, and try to accommodate you as much as possible, but the facts are that for those first years when you are earning your keep you don't get scheduled vacation and no more than perhaps four or five days at a time. Family, if I stay with these folks, I may not see you for quite a while. It's INTENSE. The purpose of this internship program is to see if this is for me. I may very well not be. We shall see.

In the end we are geared up and oriented. We have flown back to Tulsa and we have the weekend to ourselves before we start training in Kellyville. It'll be partly classroom learning, and partly hands-on practical work. I'm kind of excited for this part.

Tomorrow I'll buy groceries, and I'll return to write more about the effects of the oil spill in the gulf. As for tonight, I'm exhausted and I'm going to bed.

One day closer to being fully oriented...

Day one. Begin: 5:35am Leave hotel: 6:30am End: 7:30pm Arrive back at hotel: 8:10pm

Today was a lot of "house cleaning" type stuff--we signed tax forms, heard about 401K plans and insurance, talking about reimbursement, received our very own pair of RedWing boots, turned in our prescriptions for safety goggles, and were fitted for our overalls. We also received nice duffel bags for hauling all of our goodies (they came pre-packed with sweet green t-shirts and even sweeter green hard hats...go ahead and take a moment to be jealous). We also took our DriveSMARRT course that re-taught us how to drive. We are now trained to be crash-free drivers and we will abide by stringent rules that will keep us safe on the road. To make sure we were listening we had to complete a "commentary drive" with an instructor, narrating our driving thought process for 15 minutes of driving in rush-hour, downtown, Houston traffic. Tell me that's not what dreams are made of. Good news: I passed. I need to work on my eye-to-mirror foot-to-break though (you can't touch the break without checking your rear view!). I'm also a bit timid. I suppose that comes from growing up and learning to drive in "Francie" where we don't even have stoplights.

The agenda for the evening is to wait for our new friend from Alaska to check in and shower before we head out to eat a late dinner. I am going to start google-mapping the crap out of Houston to figure out where we will be finding said dinner. Wish me luck.

PS--Mom, I DO know how to spell Houston. I fixed it. Thanks for being such a teacher/proofreader. I'll use spell check this time.

Tulsa Houston Shuffle

Sunday I had the opportunity to drive approximately three hours from Wichita, KS to Tulsa, OK. Now, I know roadkill is everywhere but I feel like this drive put Oklahoma in the running for roadkill capital state. I've only ever seen a live armadillo once in my life (the funniest critter in the Omaha zoo) and even so I felt just terrible at the sight of all the mushed ones on the median. So sad. Also Bambie is now not only an orphan but he has no cousins, or aunts or uncles to speak of in Oklahoma.

Anyway... I got to Tulsa and arrived at our apartment only having been lost once. And that was not my fault. Tulsa is the road construction capital of the universe. I was a big girl and I figured it out all by myself.

I have two roommates--one from K-State and one from Georgia Tech. I also met a girl this morning from Pittsburgh PA. After much wondering about arrangements we made it to the Tulsa airport, onto our plane, and to Houston. We wandered around the Galleria (the biggest mall I've ever seen...also the poshy-est) for a while and I have decided to call it a night early. We are being picked up at 6:20 tomorrow morning... otherwise known as the @$$crack of dawn. I plan to be alive for it. Or as close as possible.