The greatest day of the week...the day off.

Today I slept in until 9. I probably could have slept a little more but I didn't want to waste too much of the day and since I'd gone to bed at 11 I felt like 9 was reasonable. Don't judge me for going to bed at 11, I was TIRED PANTS after that stupid coil tubing job.

Like I said, I slept in, and when I got up and turned on the TV guess what was on. Yup. Jurassic Park. And it had just started a little before I got there. This is a great omen for my day. When I finally left the apartment a little after 11 I went to Target for a few odds and ends and then I got Slim Chickens (if you recall it is a place that I have a bittersweet relationship with; sweet because I LOVE it so and bitter because it's only in Arkansas). After that I made up my mind that I would get a pedicure to celebrate the end of our official field time. I may have to go out again before we leave but maybe not. And my feet needed it after 40 hours in my boots. I took magazines and the nice little lady let me read in peace while she rubbed, filed, scrubbed and polished the yuck out of my poor little feeties. Bless her for that. It was like nirvana.

Anjelica caught a ride in from the field early today with a guy who had to come back for food that fit his heart friendly diet (you have to have a GOOD reason like a heart attack to get to leave a job) so when she got showered up we went to celebrate the end of coil tubing at Los 3 Potrillos. It was way good. But I am STUFFED. Like me and the couch are besties, stuffed. I'll be eating my dinner for a couple more meals too which I'm not upset about. Oh and today was PAYDAY!!!! All in all it was a good day.

Tomorrow we have a "class day" with Sharron, which at this point means she doesn't have a detailed plan but we're going to talk about our projects, and what we've learned and questions we have. We're starting at eight which means I'm going to have to ask nice if she'll let me go in time to catch mass. Hopefully she'll be down with that. As always, I'll keep you posted.

The hottest day ever

Today we hung out with Reggie who maintains the iron. He is in charge of making sure that each piece of piping, chicksun (I guess how to spell that every time), and valve gets taken out of rotation for inspection at the correct interval and he also tests the equipment (trucks with pumps and so forth) before they go back into the field after they come in for maintenance. Testing of the iron is done at FMC (we were told this stands for Food Manufacturing Company... a company that has expanded beyond it's beginnings obviously) which is just down the road. Reggie drives over there to pick things up and drop things off daily. That's what we did this morning... except that he left us there for 30 or 40 minutes to help the big guy running the forklift organize the old jumbled iron sitting outside. Yep, we spent that time team lifting very heavy lengths of 3' and 4' pipe onto pallets and shuffling chicksuns from pallet to pallet so they were more organized. I sweat more than I have sweat so far this summer. Partly from the lifting and partly because today we were under a heat advisory and doing all this lifting in the morning sun. I know that I was ripe by the end of the day.

On a fun note we ate at a place named Holly's today for lunch. It's a place where a group of women just make what they want to make and you file up cafeteria style and just pick out a main dish and two sides and then pay at the end of the counter. I was good! Like having mom cook for me... miss you girl!

We (Anjelica and I...Nick's on his three day weekend) spend half of tomorrow with Reggie again and the second half we have to clean out the cabs of ALL the trucks in the yard. I'm not excited about this but I bought ForceFlex trash bags tonight for the cause and I plan to sneak some rubber gloves from the lab before we start tomorrow. Saturday we are to "inventory the trucks" which means we need to know what trucks are in the yard and what they all do. We also have to be able to diagram all the workings of a cement truck by the end of Saturday. Should be interesting.

Sunday begins frack. We'll call in Saturday night to find out our yard time and on Sunday we ship out for a 12 to 16 hours and then come home for a shower and brief nap before doing it again the next day. I don't think this will be my favorite part but I don't think I can get out of it. I've begged Kyle to come kidnap me and he refuses. He told me to be tough and that I could do it. It's like he talked to Dad. Suspicious. Anyway, Reggie used to be a fracker so he had some advice for us today. We went to Wal Mart (a theme of my life these days sadly) and got not-UnderArmor, Gatorade, and fruit. He assures us that these will be much needed items for the coming week. We are grateful to have had this talk with Reggie.

On an unrelated note I've eaten Toaster Strudel for breakfast for the past couple days. I haven't had those things in years and I've missed them. Mom wasn't one for random junk food but she did let us do the Toaster Strudel thing. Thanks, Mom!

Oh yea... it's PAYDAY!!!! My favorite day of all... something good on the hottest day ever.

Best. Day. Ever.

Today started out kinda rough. We had a short day of classes but it seemed to be the longest day of my life. Wireline seems a lot of the same stuff over and over and God bless our teacher but he was giving us WAY too much detail to really do us any good. It was painful. Fortunately as I said it was a short day (no PPE down hill even!) because we broke at 2:30 to go play paintball. Yep. I got paid to play paintball!

All 70 interns and about 5 or 6 teachers (two of those being Jimmy and his wife...Jimmy being the guy in charge of us) went and took over a paintball place for four hours. I've never played before and it was awesome! I was so nervous before we started because people were being over-dramatic about how much it hurts and how much you'll bruise but I should have known that those people are over-dramatic about everything. I was originally going to just wear a t-shirt and shorts but people told me I was a straight up idiot and would hate myself. This also freaked me out. It was hotter than a hooker in church outside and I hate swimming in sweat so to hear that my coveralls were going to be necessary was painful but I went with it because I didn't want to be a straight up idiot. It was a good call. I have a few welts, some I can show people and one or two where it is not polite to let them be seen. It does hurt like nobody's business when you get hit but really after a minute or two you forget and move on. Simmer down girls. You will not "look like you got in a fist fight" unless you're one of those that bruise like a peach. Then you're screwed either way.

To top it all off, today was payday! My favorite day! I paid off my HUGE credit card bill (thanks to pub crawl shirts and a car repair) just in the nick of time and I have a bit leftover. I just have to be thrifty until the end of the month (and/or rely on my $500 AmEx card that is meant to help feed me in the field...) when payday number two rolls around. Fingers crossed that I can do it!