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.

Post For Post's Sake

When I haven't posted a blog update in a while, you can usually attribute my 'radio silence' to one of three reasons:

1. I'm not on a rig and therefore have little to say about rig life.
2. I'm on a rig and ridiculously busy with work and have no time to write.
3. I'm on a rig and am bored out of my mind with no work to do and have nothing to write about.

Can you guess which one I'm experiencing now? Congratulations, number 3 it is with a bullet. For the past 3 nights I have entertained myself by various methods including but not limited to:

1. Reading articles on my favorite online news magazines
2. Cropping, labeling, and sorting my 1,500+ family photos I scanned from the collections in Duxbury
3. Napping

Well, it's 4:25 am on a Saturday morning, so I have 95 minutes left until my relief arrives to sit here and do nothing all day. I've finished my nap, I've run out of articles to read (there has GOT to be more news in the world. WHERE IS IT???), and I've completed what I thought would be a months-long project of organizing the collection of family photos. They're even arranged chronologically. Beginning in 1898. After that I even studied up a little on the nuclear tool we'll soon be running. Believe me, I'm reeeeallly bored.

So I decided I might as well write SOMETHING on the blog, if only to keep Eric entertained. (Hi Eric!)

So here's an update on the goings-on in oilfield world. They're too short to make a blog post about each, but compiled together they make a nice briefing of sorts:

• While home and in Boston on vacation, I barely managed to increase my vegetable intake. I cannot say for sure that I even had a whole serving per day, so my firm resolve to up my veggies fell flat on its face. But, I eat TONS of veggies on the rig with lunch & dinner, so I can justify it, right? right?
  
  
• The wind has been quite brisk out here and the rig continues to rock, but in the way of experience mariners I seem to have developed my sea legs and the nausea has abated. Or maybe that's my sea stomach.

• We have about 3000 more feet to drill before we reach the section where we plan to run the nuclear tools, so until then I'm getting plenty of sleep. At this rate, we might never get there because they accidentally injected enough extra cement to fill an unexpected 400 more feet of hole than they planned, and we have spent the past 3 days drilling through it (That's 3 million dollars in unplanned operations costs, roughly, for those keeping score). 100 more feeet to go and then I'll actually have some work to keep me from being so bored all night.

• The rig recently received a new treadmill for the gym to replace the one that hasn't worked since before I got here in September. Now I have something to do cardio on besides the stationary bike (or the person that was going to steal the bike has now vacated it for the treadmill, either way its a win!).

Tune in next week for your oilfield briefings! Thank you, and good night.

-- Radio Silence --