900 feet left

Yesterday was the first day all week that I woke up on time and didn't sleep through my alarm, so I took advantage of my early rising to run over four miles on the treadmill before my shift. Had I known what a physically and mentally demanding day was ahead of me after I showered and ate breakfast, I might have cut back on the mileage.

Now after a shaky 5 hours of sleep, I'm stewing in the exhaustion from my 21-hour day yesterday, and enjoying the residual caffeine that's still in my system from downing Diet Cokes just to get through the next round of "To-Do List" items. The rig finally made a decision early yesterday morning to pull out of the hole and finish the last 900 feet (they tacked on a bit more to the Total Depth) with a different set of tools.

Unfortunately for me, my coworker who is super-experienced in these tools had just gone back to town, having finished the week we had been allowed to have him. So I was up until one in the morning obsessively checking every last detail of the processed logs and data before sending them to the client, only occasionally turning to my new night hand and green-at-the-gills trainee to teach them a thing or two about what exactly I was doing and what they should be learning at that moment.

I fear my grammar is suffering this morning. Please forgive me. Last night my brain was so over-worked I would routinely forget the names of both my night hand and trainee as well as what I had told them five minutes prior. It must have been an entertaining evening for them.

In the meantime I get to chill. Maybe I'll even take a chair nap -- but I probably have too much caffeine left in my system for that. We're waiting on a boat to bring a new computer so the rig floor can have a working monitoring system. Apparently you have to be able to tell what exactly it is you're doing while drilling in order to be in compliance with national regulatory agencies.

I hope to take as much advantage as possible of any chances to relax over the next few days. Once we finish this last 900 feet of drilling, my two coworkers are going to do something I've never done before: RIG DOWN. While rigging up usually has to be done quicker than it should be, involves lots of complicated planning and decision making, rigging down always has to be done faster than is humanly possible, is one of the messiest, dirtiest, and in worst cases: most disorganized parts of our job (from what I hear). We take down all the sensors and the cables that have been run all over the rig over the past couple of months. They're caked in mud and oil, tangled into the hundreds of other cables run by other service employees, and secured with thousands of sturdy plastic zip-ties to hand-railings, walkways, and cable-trays a good 30 feet over our heads. All the while you've got the company man breathing down your neck dying to drop you on the boat and ship you back to land; once we're done drilling he doesn't want to pay for us to be out here one minute longer than absolutely necessary. Not to mention the managers in the offices in town clamoring for the final processed data -- because we clearly have PLENTY of time to spend poring over our logs at this point.

And then bliss: when you've reached land, showered the diesel fumes out of your hair, and after a couple of all-nighters in the office End of Well Report is turned in, you can go to the nearest bar and enjoy that first celebratory beer. Who needs "job well done" when the words "job done" are satisfying enough?

I surely can't wait.

I Jinxed It!

I was just about to start my shift this morning in a rather good mood. I had gone jogging on the treadmill in the gym after waking up, then ate a good breakfast, and I was looking forward to a nice calm day of steady drilling. As I put on my steel toed boots and braved the strong sea winds, I thought to myself "How pleasant the job is when we drill steadily for thousands and thousands of feet. The daily routine becomes solidified, paperwork is kept up-to-date, and I have plenty of time to update my blog on the relative merits of the local vegetation."

Thirty seconds later my bliss was shattered when I arrived in the logging shack to find out that they had STOPPED drilling only three hours before because they suspected the drill bit had failed. We had gone from drilling 100ft/hr to 4ft per hour in a matter of minutes, and they decided to change drilling assemblies in hopes of a better rate of penetration.

So lucky me, I got to spend all day doing the most labor-intensive aspects of my whole job, all rolled into one shift. I had to program tools, prepare paperwork, and prep them for drilling. I had to stand around on the rig floor to watch all our equipment being loaded and unloaded. I had to dump the recorded data off our old tools, process it, and write brand new log formats before I could even generate the logs to send to town. And I've got plenty more to do.

In fact I should be working on keeping all my paperwork timely right now, since its fast getting out-of-date. But I needed to detail my day's struggles and thus benefit from the therapeutic aspects of writing a blog.

We're almost back to drilling again. In 14 hours! I cannot recall the last time we turned around drilling operations in ONLY 14 hours. I'm honestly surprised I'm not dead on my feet right now from having to work that fast -- although I can't say the same for the directional driller. He's gotten less than half the sleep I have!

I look back at the post I wrote yesterday about having to juggle many different tasks throughout my shift and I LAUGH! I LAUGH at that girl who thought she knew what it was like to juggle a million different tasks at once. SHE HAS NO IDEA WHAT A MILLION TASKS IS LIKE!

I had probably better stop now before I jinx myself even worse...

Oh! And in an interesting side note: our rig was struck by lightning last night! I was lucky to be asleep at the time, because it tends to surge all of our equipment and crash all of our computers. My night hand thus had the enviable task of getting us back up and running. And kudos to him for doing such a good job at it that he didn't have to wake me up. I have such a good night hand!

Hit the ground running.... a MARATHON

I was woken up from a lovely nap on Saturday (since I was still partially stuck on night shift from a WHOLE WEEK before) by a phone call from the rig. Guess what! The helicopter that everyone said wasn't going to be scheduled -- because a). it's the weekend and b). the weather is pretty bad for helicopter flights -- was slated for a last-minute departure early Sunday morning. I had three hours to pack, clean my house, and prepare myself and the trappings of my life for my next exodus to the rig.

A 4-hr car ride later, I was dropped off at the "Lighthouse Lodge" in Venice, LA <-- for all those interested in maps, check out that link. Venice, LA is in such a spotty area it doesn't even look like it should EXIST, let alone be habitable. In an unexpected yet unsurprising note, Venice is a world-class fishing destination and the Lighthouse Lodge is marketed as a premier spot to cater to such a tourist crowd. The front desk clerks were slightly befuddled by my pajama-clad, incredibly mussed female self checking in at 11:00pm and scheduling a check-out time for 5:30am the next day. They clearly get plenty of oilfield traffic, and must have assumed that I was part of that set, but under no circumstances do I fall into the "stereotype" of oilfield personnel. No matter how greasy and unkempt, I remain an anomaly.

The early morning helicopter ride was quite hairy, and our first attempt was actually aborted when the pilot did not feel safe continuing after the first twenty minutes out to sea. A few hours in a utilitarian waiting room and one more helicopter ride later, I eventually arrived at the rig just in time for lunch. I wolfed down a quick and juicy hamburger, and headed up to our unit to see what was going on.

They were finishing the data processing from the previous run, and I helped complete it and send out the necessary logs to the client. Once that was complete, there was nothing left to do but wait for all of our tools bobbing up and down on the boat a few hundred yards away. One surprisingly deep and thorough nap later, I was back in my hard hat just as the tools were loaded onto our deck. From there it was a frenzy of preparation for the next foreseeable future.

We had to program the tools (which proved problematic when our cable to plug into the tools shorted), we had to measure them, load two 30-pound lithium battery assemblies into them, type up a few dozen forms of data, etc, etc, etc, and all within a window of roughly 7 hours. There was very little breathing room that night. My cell manager, the night hand and I all worked unceasingly until four a.m. this morning when some equipment on the rig floor malfunctioned (unrelated to us, thank heavens!) and we got a few hours to catch our respective breaths while they repaired it.

Now we are tripping in the hole, which means that they're lowering the drilling assembly in piece by piece; screwing the 90-ft long stands of drill-pipe together one at a time. And lucky for me they seem to be taking their sweet time about it. I have been left on my own to keep this popsicle stand running, as both of my coworkers have gone to bed from utter exhaustion. We're all roughly equally sleep deprived, but in a twisted sort of logic it seemed to make sense to have me be the one unlucky soul who gets to sleep last. So until our tools reach a more interesting depth, I can nap in my office chair with impunity. We've got over a mile to go -- and I have improvised a nice little footrest for my purposes.

Good night.

It's that time again!

Time for that 2a.m. post because I can't sleep like a normal person!

I arrived home on Friday evening, and even after a 4 hour nap in the car ride back I was still able to sleep a good 5 hours straight in my own bed on Friday night... since I had stayed up for 23 hours straight before leaving the rig.

I had a pretty easy last few days on the job because they had some problems downhole and we didn't go back to drilling until late last night -- when I was already home. But apparently my luck gave out when I reached dry land.

Today (or yesterday, rather since it was Saturday), I tried all the "right things" to get myself switched over to a normal schedule. I knew it was going to be tough, but I thought it would be fun -- and helpful -- if I did a 19 mile hike around a nearby lake. Exercise and sunlight are two of the highest recommended aids to resetting your circadian rythym, and I received a surfeit of both. Now I'm sunburned (just a little) and sore (all over) ... and I just woke up as if I'd planned on only taking a 3 hr nap. Sigh.

Now, I have a couple of great photos from my hike which I would LOVE to post, but I seem to have misplaced my camera cord sometime between Thanksgiving and now. Mom, Dad, is there by any chance a small black cord that mysteriously appeared at either of your houses? Yeah, it's really distinctive, I know.

I guess it's time to whip out a movie and do some crocheting. Enjoy your restfulness, all you slumbering readers, and be grateful for it.

P.s. Don't believe this website's timestamp, which they get from West Coast time -- just add 2 hrs and you'll have my ungodly hour.

I hope it's not a sign of things to come

Guess what I get to do to start off the new year? Switch over to night shift! Yayyyyyy!

*crickets chirping*

Okay, so admittedly I have said in the past that I enjoy working night shift. There's something quieter about the world -- even when I have to wear earplugs to keep from going deaf on the rig floor, the job just seems a bit calmer.

But really, I'm just NOT in the mood to work night shift right now. Too bad for me, because I promised my night hand that I would break him out as day hand this week. He's ready for the promotion to Cell Manager, and he certainly deserves it. At least now I can ease off some of the onus of responsibility from my shoulders onto his -- he needs to learn how to run the job, after all!

I woke up today at the usual 4am. I sort-of worked, mostly goofed off until my night hand arrived on the helicopter at about 9am. Then we had a long talk about operations and job plans, and I went to bed at noon for the "short change", where you work six hours, get six hours off, and then work twelve hours. Some rig crews have to short change every week they're out here. I don't know how they do it.

We picked today to be my short change because our new tools haven't arrived yet, we're not going to be drilling anytime soon, and we're mostly caught up on all the backlog of paperwork, etc. So it's a low-key enough night that if I fall asleep in my chair repeatedly for hours on end, nothing will go wrong.

So, have a good night to all of you who are going to be in bed in a few hours. I hope you realize how lucky you are.

A new year, a new hope, an OLD resolution

It's been three days since my last post and three days since my last major disaster on the job. Ever since then things have been going (*fingers crossed!!!*) relatively smoothly. There was a glitch or two along the way -- incorrectly configured cables made downloading the data from our tool a challenge -- our surveys were being incorrectly calculated so there was a hunt deep in the bowels of the computer data to solve the mystery -- but nothing so heart-stoppingly hectic as before.

Dare I hope that things have turned a corner for the better? All jobs have their hiccups in the beginning; ours were more like full body seizures. It's a nice feeling to be entering the new year with a few less worries on one's shoulders. Let's hope it stays that way.

We finished drilling the previous section two days ago. I've caught up on all my reports in the meantime, but seeing as how I'm the only one on the crew without any family in Louisiana (the day directional driller has two grandkids, the night directional driller has a pregnant wife, and my night hand has two pre-school aged boys himself) I volunteered to be the one person to stay on the rig while they run casing and act as the "company liaison" to schedule tool shipments and crew transport for everyone when the rig is ready to start drilling again.

So I've got until Monday (by current estimates) to just hang out here and watch movies on my laptop. They might change their minds and send me in anyway, but I'm not opposed to making another holiday bonus for merely staving off the boredom on New Year's Day. After all, I've worked hard enough these past two weeks to deserve a little "easy money".

Oh, and can anyone guess what my New Year's Resolution this year will be?

I'm a Vampire

I spent the past week NOT working the night shift. This was a near-unbearably painful experience for me.

Apparently I hate the sun. I enjoy coming to work just as it starts to sink over the horizon, catching the last glimmers of the darkening sky as I drink my English Breakfast tea after having eaten a breakfast likely consisting of baked chicken and cucumber salad.

I love the blackness of the world during my 12-hr shift. No matter how crazy and stressful things are inside my artificially lit logging unit, the world itself seems that much more peaceful and quiet outside when the sky is unlit.

I adore leaving work while it's still dark out -- I can pretend that it's 10 o'clock at night instead of 6 o'clock in the morning, and thus a reasonable time to go to bed. It's a race to make sure I can leave before the sunrise even begins so as to maintain the self-deception. This is now a lot harder after Daylight Savings, but is nothing compared to the challenges I've faced this past week.

I decided it would be a good idea to work a "split shift" of 12am-12pm so as to learn more about what it takes to be a nuclear cell manager (someone who can run a job involving nuclear tools). In retrospect I don't know why it seemed like a scheme that would work, since there was very little I wouldn't see on night shift that I would see in the daytime. The main difference between working nights vs. days is that the office is twenty times more likely to call up and ask questions or ask for favors during the day, but my cell manager fielded those calls without my help anyway.

Then there was the sun. With Hurricane Ida barreling through the gulf the clouds have kept it at bay lately, but earlier this week I would hiss in pain each time I walked outside to feel the skin-scorching rays hit my face in the daytime. I was almost surprised that I didn't actually start to smoke and crumble to ash like a real vampire (please forgive the oxymoron).

But my new roommate was the proverbial camel's straw. She's a petite Asian woman who works in the galley on the day shift, and spends about two hours each evening puttering around in the room before she goes to bed. For the past three nights she has proceeded to wake me up countless times between the hours of 6:30-9:30pm, and would only settle into the top bunk and turn off the light mere moments before my alarm would go off at 9:25.

So as of today I am switching back to the standard night shift. Hooray!

Whatever Gets You Through The Day (or night)

Let's see. It's Wednesday night--nope, make that early Thursday morning. I arrived on this rig on Sunday afternoon, which makes this my 5th day on the rig. My first night shift was rather busy. I loaded and unloaded multiple sets of batteries, programmed various tools, and did all sorts of other pre-drilling run tasks required of me.

Monday night was slightly less busy. I had a to-do list of about 9 items that I shared with another engineer, and most of them were not very time-intensive.

Tuesday night left me with barely anything to do but sit around and watch the crane operators move our tools back and forth across the deck for a few hours.

Tonight: nothing. Just wait.

We were expecting to put our tools in the hole on Monday night and to start drilling on Tuesday morning. I would have thought that such a large-scale operation as they have going on out here would run more efficiently than what I am used to. That is definitely not the case. The crews out here move slower than the slowest land-rig crews I've worked with, and that is saying a lot. On the slow land rigs, if the company man told me it would take them 2 hours before they would be ready to pick up my tools, I would multiply that by a factor of 3 to get a more realistic estimate of 6 hours. Here the reality-factor seems to be more like 5. Considering the size of this operation and the number of people out here (~300), I don't even want to imagine how much this rig costs per day. As a reference point, my previous deepwater rig had a population of about 150 people and a daily cost of about $900,000/day (It should be noted that the daily operating costs are not directly proportional to number of personnel on board. This is just a benchmark).

Thus, I have had a lot of downtime. Now I'm more or less obligated to remain all shift in my logging unit out of peer pressure (there are 4 other engineers on shift with me, and they all stay in the unit) and a on-call atmosphere (must answer phone if/when it rings!). Most of the downtime is therefore spent on the internet. Despite the fact that everyone knows that everyone is goofing off constantly online, it looks a lot more productive than if I were, say, crocheting.

Here is what I do with my time:

My standard "keep up to date with the world" websites are CNN.com and facebook.com. I consider the content of each about equal in their quality, so I don't spend very much time on either. A few months ago I actually went on a facebook-hiatus as I realized that I had developed a slightly unhealthy habit of investigating my high school friends' lives without actually making any kind of contact. Now I just browse the social media benignly.

The vast majority of my news reading comes from Slate.com. It is an "internet magazine", whatever that means, founded by the Washington Post. I enjoy it for it's more-balanced-than-average reporting, and it's commentaries and opinions that leave me thinking "That is just what I think!". Alas, on days like these, it cannot post enough articles to keep me satisfied.

My next favorite thing to do is the crossword. I am a true amateur crossword-er, and the Yahoo! Games version is at a perfect level for me; I can almost finish a couple of puzzles per week. This version also wins top praises from me due to the fact that they leave the last 2 weeks of puzzles posted online, enabling massive binges of crossword-ing when it strikes my mood.

If you've got a friend (or if you're interested in playing a stranger), try this online multiplayer Scrabble game. Alas, my former night-shift scrabble partner quit and went back to school.

Then there are the webcomics xkcd and phd, both very familiar to any MIT alum. If you like nerd humor, they're aces. Unfortunately they both post new strips only a few times a week, and their relative time-killing power is low. That also goes for postsecret.com, which nonetheless keeps me enraptured for a few minutes every week.

When I worked alone on the night shift I would practice memorizing monologues from Shakespeare or learn the lyrics to "La Vie en Rose" by Edith Piaf. This, alas, has been set aside for the benefit of my coworkers (I currently work in a roughly 8 feet x 20 feet box filled with 5 engineers, twice that many computers, desks & cabinets). Proprieties of behavior must be observed for sanity's sake.

Does anybody have any suggestions for additions to my repertoire? Unfortunately the limited bandwidth (and occasionally the client's regulations) disallow any use of video or audio streaming, so I cannot surf Youtube or any radio station. Suggestions would be appreciated!

The Opposite of That

It is a flaw of mine to be overly concerned with how other people perceive me. This can sometimes be beneficial, for it makes me more diligent and conscientious in my work, but it can also lead me to overly stress out about my mistakes.

I have had the good fortune to be working on a deepwater rig running high-tier tools with two other women from my company, whom I truly respect and like.

Unfortunately I keep making mistakes. I cannot seem to go an entire 12-hr shift without doing something (or forgetting something) of dire consequence (or importance). This is surprisingly easy to do, because of the great deal of scrutiny paid to each detail of this job due to the expense of deepwater work.

Each time one of my mistakes or omissions is found out, I see my coworkers' eyes widen in what I assume to be horror.

- "You forgot to check the resistance between each tool and it's extender lead?!"
- "You let the rig crew take the sensor down without supervising them?!?!"
- "You wrote what in that email?!!!?!!!?!!!"

I try to avoid making too many excuses, but I can't help trying to defend myself in what seems to be an unreasonably catastrophic loss of my esteem in their eyes. This morning, for example, the aforementioned sensor had just been removed and replaced by the rig crew, and alas, not yours truly. The subsequent re-calibration of said sensor proved unsuccessful so I went up to the rig floor, shaken and cringing from the minor hysteria my day-hand experienced when I told her of my actions.

I spent the next two hours (past the time I was supposed to be in bed already) troubleshooting the 30 lb solid steel sensor. I dragged a replacement up the 3 flights of stairs and hooked it up. No luck. I tried a backup sensor cable which happened to be handy, and went back and forth from the phone to the plug about 6 times to see if I had plugged it into the right place. No dice. I tried the backup cable with the original sensor. No chance. I then got to spend about 45 minutes crawling through the grease, the grime, and the slightly caustic drilling fluid running a new cable. When I plugged it in guess what happened! No signal!

Sigh. Or scream. Yes, a great big ROAR of frustration might be appropriate at that moment.

My day hand came up to the rig floor to see what else we could check. Then we went to the series of plugs where all our sensors are plugged in and she asked:

"Where did you plug it in?"
I point where.
"That's the wrong plug. It's the one right below it."
"No it's not; I followed the mnemonic!"
"The Horse Died Placing 12th?"
"No! It's 'The Dead Horse Placed 12th'"
and so on and so forth.... until I realized I was wrong.
At least we were both able to laugh about it.

I think the moral of the story is that my day hand needs to come to the terms with the fact that I'm not perfect. I'm still learning, and I'm GOING to make mistakes.

Either that or come up with a better mnemonic that isn't so easy to flip around. I'm currently leaning towards: "Theo Huxtable Didn't Pass 12th [grade]". No way I can flip the H & the D around on that one!

First Impressions

Well it's been a long time. My apologies, but after an AMAZING vacation in England, a few frustrating days working on an End of Well report back in Louisiana, a quick restorative trip to Florida, and then another vacation in New England, I'm finally back on the oil rig circuit.

I barely know what to talk about; so much has happened!

I'm on a new rig as of today. I was supposed to arrive yesterday, but bad weather grounded all the helicopters and I got to spend a hellish 8 hours in their waiting room with nothing but coffee for my empty stomach and nothing but my ebook reader with its rapidly depleting battery to pass the time. But after a few more hours wait again this morning, I was on my way out to a DEEPWATER rig.

Deepwater is a significant distinction. I was offshore before, but I was on the Shelf (did I mention my previous rig was in 12 ft of water?). Deepwater is expensive, and typically much more profitable. It is also a VERY high-stakes and intense environment with virtually no room for error or delay. I don't know the operation costs of this particular well, but a comparable one ran at $11 per second.

The first thing I noticed when I arrived: the rig sways. I've been on lots of boats and cruise ships before, but I don't recall the sort of gently undulating motions I get here. It strengthens and weakens, and so far has not been strong enough to do more than close some previously ajar doors. I have been fighting a slight feeling of nausea all day, however, and I can only hope that it will pass soon.

The other most striking thing about working in deepwater: the water itself is magnificently blue. Back on the Shelf the water was an unhandsome brownish-green. Here it is a deep and shining cerulean, although I suppose this will change slightly depending on the cloudiness of the day. But when I first spied the color of the water, I could barely tear my eyes away for all that I was holding up our orientation tour.

I'm back on night-shift now, so I'm trying to adjust to the 6pm-6am schedule. Luckily I came just after we stopped drilling, so I have no work to do until they start again on Sunday after they're finished running casing. Wish me luck!

The Difficulties I've Faced....

The engineer who I had been working with since before New Year's on this offshore job was scheduled to have a vacation last week, so he was training me to become "Cell Manager" of the job so he could leave me in charge and take his vacation. This was going to be a bit of a challenge, because the person they had slated as my Night Hand had not actually gotten his promotion to Night Hand, and had not actually held an entire night shift on his own. So in addition to it being my first time in charge, I was also going to have to stay up extra late and wake up extra early so as to ensure that he was handling the job competently. Yikes.

So I guess I wasn't too disappointed to find out that my intended Night Hand got sent on another job the day before I came back from standby. But I did have to go in to the office to find another Night Hand, since he had failed to inform them that they were technically "stealing" him from my rig. The only people that were in town and available to work were either a bit more experienced than me, or a LOT more experienced than me. They sent the guy that had only 6 months more experience then me out to be my Night Hand.

So first thing I do when I get out here is to power up our unit, and get our computers turned on. Of course I mess that up. This is the first rig I've worked on that has me working in a pressurized unit, which keeps flammable gases out of the computer equipment, and keeps me from blowing up the rig. Now I've learned how to turn on the pressurization system before, but I've never actually done it on the rig, so OF COURSE I do it wrong. My night hand fixes it for me, and I make a note to myself to practice on the units they re-kit at the office next time I'm in town (Minus 100 points for Holly).

The next step is to turn the computers on, but we can't! There is a problem with their power supply! Not all the power in our unit is bad, however, because the lights are working. The air conditioning is working. It must be the box that all the computers are plugged into which has a battery to keep the computers powered for 30 minutes in case the pressurization system trips the power shut-off while we're drilling. That box is beeping and not fully turning on, so something's wrong with it. But there's not much troubleshooting we can do. We have to call the office for suggestions, or get them to send a new one ASAP, but our satellite phone has no power either! And we're offshore, so cellphone reception is not at its best. We're trying to figure out alternate solutions, and halfway started on rewiring our entire unit when my Night Hand sees that one of the circuit breakers is tripped. Problem solved. Sigh. (Minus 1000 points for Holly)

I did solve one problem on my own, *pat on the shoulder*. The mice and the keyboards for 2 of our 3 computers were working, but NOT working. It was a conundrum which was fixed when I rebooted all three machines. Yay me (Plus 5 points).

So we had everything up and running, and our next object was to get our tools ready to go in the hole on the next drilling run. We loaded the batteries and programmed the first tool, but when we plugged into the second tool, it blew a fuse in the box that connects it to the computer! That has never happened to me before, so I had no idea what was going on. When my night hand pulled out the fuse to see if it had shorted, I gawked at him like he was performing magic (Minus 10 points for Holly).

Hours later, we have shorted about a dozen fuses in attempting to diagnose the problem, and we are down to our last 2. We have been working with the office to check everything and anything it could be, and we only have one possibility left. It could, maybe, Poooooosssibly (but not very likely), be one of the cables that's causing the short. Sure enough, it is, and we're lucky enough that minus the faulty 300-ft long cable, we still have enough length in the rest of our cables to reach all the way to our tools so we can plug into them (barely). (No points for anyone on this one, except the Directional Driller who told us how to check the cables)

It went on like that for a while, and I think I ended up with somewhere around the neighborhood of -35,725 points by the weekend's finish. But I guess that negative net worth somehow translates into having learned something at some point along the road, hopefully.