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!

Dun da-dun dun DONE!

I am done in Conway! I presented my project today and completed my exit interview and now I have a day to pack and I leave for Houston on Saturday. Glorious!

My presentation went pretty well, twice as long as it is supposed to be but other than that it was delightful I'm told. I can totally trim some fat so I'm not super worried about it. We took cookies to people as a thank-you for having us and I think that made some days. Not gonna lie here, I think we set the bar kinda high for future interns. Sharron tells us that she tried to dig up dirt on us (talking to people we worked with to assess our performance) and there was none to be had. These people seem to have loved us. Thank you Mom and Dad for my old fashioned, Midwestern upbringing--they loved that we SHOWED UP. It baffles me that this is apparently a recurring problem. I would think that would be the easy part of any job... go to the place of your work. Whatever. Bottom line, they love us. We got parting gifts too! Ok just a little "log book" type notebook (us girls got PINK), some hand sanitizer on a key chain, and a pocketknife (all company promotional items). I'm most excited about the knife. Being a lady of the Midwest I am used to the men in my company to carry them, and I know that I'm never expected to, but now being a piece of oil field trash I feel the need to have one to pry things apart, dig into and cut things, and just use for all kinds of good manly tasks.

Tonight, Anjelica and I celebrated being done by going to dinner at a Japanese steakhouse down the road for sushi. It was pretty tasty. If you're reading this in a timely fashion, my twit-pic should still be over there >> on the sidebar. Or you can see it on Facebook. It was pretty. Not to pretty to eat though. Very tasty! Nick, on the other hand, celebrated by leaving for Texas IMMEDIATELY. This whole damp county thing is suffocating him.

Tomorrow's agenda:

Sleep in (because I CAN!)

Get my car once-over'ed for all the upcoming driving (so much driving!)

Get my nails done (I need to feel like a girl again... very much need)

Pack all my stuff (which has spread out and settled in famously in the past month. Ugh)

Look up, write down, and draw out my directions for Saturday (many MANY times)

Countdown...

Houston: 2 days (ish...depending on how you count Saturday...whatever)

Manhattan (Manhappiness): 7 days

Francie: 10 days

I made it!!!

Also special shout-out to one (of 4) of my readers: Happy Birthday Heather!!! :)

Cement testing and gelling water...

Today was our first day in the lab. What does a oil extraction services provider do with a lab you ask? They design and test cement mixes as well as frack job fluids. They do this all in the comfort of an air-conditioned trailer. Needless to say, I like the lab. We got to run rheology tests for cement mixtures that were going out on jobs and we also got to help test a water to gel mix and the corresponding breaker. I'm probably not using all the right terms here but who'll check me on it? After lunch we also watched the USA soccer match on Mark's phone while he mixed test slurry. He's into soccer so it was fun to talk to him about it. Lunch was amazing by the way; La Fuerta (sp?) is the Conway version of La Fiesta. So tasty!

We'll spend a couple more days in the lab before we move out to the bulk plant where Nick has been working and sweating is (you know) off. You haul, open and mix bags of cement and additives to make the mixtures designed and tested by Mark in the lab. It will be heavy manual labor in the sun and humidity so I'm trying to soak up the AC while I got it.

As for last night's festivities at Chris's (who had a birthday yesterday), it was fun. The nice thing about working here is that everyone's really friendly and they like to hang out with each other...probably because their schedules don't really promote out of company friends...but I digress. They invited us lowly interns on the spot and they were happy to have us. It was good times!

Oh I'd also like to add a note about the effects of the gulf incident (sorry I haven't done more of this, Bre, but I don't know what to tell you):

The company will likely cut their recruiting efforts drastically for the coming year because their policy is not to fire people if the need in their district wanes (or is eliminated by other means) but to relocate them to where they are needed. All the displaced workers are going to be filling the positions that open up around other parts of the country and so they won't need to hire new greenhorns for those positions. This has been the first few days since starting work that I haven't heard something about BP or the oil spill or "the situation in the gulf." It's a hot topic.

Mom, I know I just told you all of this but now it's properly documented in case you forget about it. It was good to talk to you tonight!

Stay tuned for the next installment of Intern Sam and the Oilfield Diaries.

Welcome to Arkansas, where the accents are thicker and our purses are camo

At long last, I am finally at my field location in Conway, Arkansas (the drive was, in fact, lovely. Thanks for asking)! I know you were all wondering when my internship would actually start. The answer is: today the moment I arrived in Conway. I showed up at the yard (the office) and was pretty much set to work setting myself up in the company online systems and taking tests to be allowed to go to the field. It was an intense first 3 (ish) hours.

We got set up in our apartment which is NICE. It puts the StratCastle to shame (though that's not real hard to do). The only thing it's lacking is all the fellow interns... *sniff* Nick, Anjelica and I are all in Well Services so we are in the apartments and Brendan and Jared are in Wireline so they're in a hotel for the time being but I think they move to some apartments (we're hoping ours) by next week. Unfortunately we've already been told that we'll spend little time in our apartments.

My manager (Stephen-cementing manager) has already let down any professional best behavior facade that he may have had. He's real honest and upfront. I like it. Our mentor (Sharron or "Mamma Sharron") is much the same. So is everyone really. Again, I like it. So far things are good. I'll try to keep reporting regularly but from the sounds of it, things may get kinda sporadic. Hang in there people, it's gonna be a bumpy ride.

First purse I see in AR is forest print camo of course.

Walking into our apartment and looking slightly right: The kitchen!

And if you look more forward: The doors are just the back door (nothing special out there) and the hall to the right leads to our rooms...

When you go to the end of the hall you get to my room... sleepin' in style!

And if you look back toward the door you see that I have the master room...my own private bathroom! Anjelica has a bathroom (the door across the hall) to herself too so don't feel too bad. There's a washer and dryer in hers too (I swooned!).

Conway, Conway, where for art thou, Conway

So here we are at the end of the Kellyville training experience (kind of a decent band name there...) and we are all preparing (and by this I mean drinking by the pool) to head out to our locations. I am basically done packing and I have taken the Canadians to Braum's (they don't have it up there) so all that's left is for me to join the merriment down at the pool. I plan to play it pretty low key because I agreed to drive one of my fellow Conway-bound interns to the airport in the morning at the early hour of 6:30 (I'm so nice), but I can't skip out entirely because somehow, in three weeks, I have become friends with these some odd 70 of us. Who'd'a thought (who'd a? who'd of? who'd-a?...whatever)?

Brief recap of Sunday, Monday and Tuesday:

All you need to know about Sunday is that Toy Story 3 changed my life. I'm normally stone faced in any movie but I was a little misty at the end of this one. I'm crazy--I've accepted it. It was just that good.

Monday was a long and boring day of learning about D&M (drilling and measurements)...we basically sat around and waited for the bus between 3 and 5... so fun. Monday night we went to The Melting Pot for birthday fondue (Anna's birthday to be exact). It was AMAZING. I've never had a dinner of multiple courses or one that was mostly fondue style. Delicious!

Tuesday was even more boring that Monday (I didn't even think that was possible)--at least in the morning. The afternoon proved more enjoyable as we got our summer projects assigned to us. My project (drum roll please) is to come up with a volume chart for a new tank in Conway. I'll basically be dusting off what calculus I retained and integrating for volume and correlating it with the depth of the substance being stored. Feel free to be impressed (or vomit...either way). I can't quite decide if I'm excited about this or not. It's totally doable and practical which I like but it does have that element of calculus (the devil's work) to it. We'll see how I feel about it in the morning and in the coming week.

Now tomorrow I head to Conway to really get down to business. As excited as I am to get to work and really apply the things I've learned (how to lift heavy things properly), I'm going to miss hanging out with all these crazy interns here in Tulsa. The good news is that I'll see a lot of them in Houston in August for wrap-up. *Sigh*