Fat man attire and an OU whooping

I'd like to open this post with accolades for the Oklahoma Sooners recent whooping of the Texas Longhorns; 55-17, oh hell yes! (excuse my language). So much for conference realignment drama and distractions, OU came to play football and Texas decided to help them out. As for the fans, I was disappointed that our fans were not as loud as they historically have been and attribute it to the early game and a possible malaise set in after consuming the fried butter, fried beer or too many of Fletcher's corn dogs (save me some of those, please). These fatty foods transformed our normally raucous fan base into a lethargic, hungover bunch left yelling at half their capacity. However, if my arteries were clogged with fried butter I would only be able to yell at 50% too.

Last night I had an epiphany at the Main Construction Camp (MCC - A large BP camp with awesome food) on the East Operating Area (EOA - Old ARCO exploration side); Overalls are the working fat-man's pant of choice. Overalls don't need to be sized properly, and have that natural baggy look. If you've made the life choice to expand your abdomen (as a man) from your old high school 32 to a portly, well-established 42 then the overall can accomodate you throughout the process. No longer are the days of fat pant shopping needed (much to the relief of these manly men) as two pairs of overalls (one pair for laundry day) will cover your entire oilfield career. But wait, there's more! Overalls can also have your name stitched on them, in place of confining coveralls which are often a challenge for our girthy friends to enter. As such, you can grow into your new pants and not be bothered with people asking your name or what company you may work for.

Overalls: the epitome of the lazy, working-man's clothing.

If you want noise then bring the blog post

Oh yeah, another blog post for September. Why? Easy, I found out people actually read this.

I received several questions about how I keep this blog so fresh, creative, and edgy (I asked myself this multiple times, validating the previous statement). I let my job take care of that, as it stretches the boundaries of what my sleep depraved mind finds funny. I then multiply that by whatever weird song/pop-culture reference is in my head at the moment and out comes a fresh pile of creativity.

As for current activities, I'm back on the slope after a massive 4.5 days off. During that time I enjoyed watching OU beat Florida State, eating junk food, and participating in the Anchorage Pirate Pub Crawl. The pub crawl is just that, everyone dresses as a pirate and walks around to various pubs. There was some award at the end, but having an excuse to dress up as a pirate and run around hitting things with a plastic sword is rewarding enough.

Work time,

R-train out.

Work, work and work

Some of you have noticed that it has been nearly 3 months since the last update. Sorry about that, aside from an awesome family vacation, I've been working.

So far I've spent 7 of the past 8 weeks on the slope, with one week in town spent traveling or attending client meetings. When times like these occur, blogs must be put to the side for important things (like iPad games).

All is well, will write more soon.

2 updates, 1 week; it's happening.

You're damn right it's another update this week. Can you handle it? I think you can. Life on the slope is going well, we're back to drilling and bringing all you hard working folks some black gold. Many of you are worried about the high price of gas, and to you I say "Welcome to the Alaska Fuel Club". Yep, we had that 4 dollar gas all year (It's five now).

I've learned a great deal this hitch about rig operations not directly related to my job and even about life. The rig ops stuff is boring to everyone but me, so I won't elaborate; the life lessons are awesome.

The primary life lesson I learned are that people are absolutely crazy. Go ahead and disprove me (you're in denial). No matter how sane you thought someone was, nay. I -almost always- enjoy crazy people and their shenanigans, whether the advice is to start as big a fire as you can if you're in a plane crash or make sure or ensure you always wear pants to WalMart.

Anyway, this crazy bachelor is going to run and keep on drilling in the free world. Adios, Amoebas (favorite saying of a geologist up here).

Back to Drilling

Hey there,

Well after a few days of running casing, cementing and testing the previous two items we are back to drilling. Going back to drilling is always hectic thanks to the ample amount of paperwork that is added to the already large workload. Today went extremely well, and I'm glad of it.

Sorry for the short post, need to get back to the work thing.

Stranded on the slope

I never realized one could be stranded on the north slope in summer. I knew it was possible in winter with the high winds and blinding snow storms, but not the summer time. Well, Alaska has figured out yet another way to defeat our struggle to pump black stuff out of the ground by knocking out our bridges.

The Kuparuk river flows through the middle of the oil field, and is frozen 3/4 of the year. However, it has an annual increase in levels due to melting snow from the Brooks Range mountains south of us; as a result, this water and ice flow can knock out our bridges. Last year was mild, thus the bridges were saved. This year, particularly bad and it even washed out the road leading to where the bridges once were...

You may ask if this is a result of global warming, to which I would reply "shut up". This has been going on for 35 years, and shows no signs of stopping anytime soon. Also, BP will continue to build cheap bridges that can be knocked out yearly so the root cause is still there.

I'm somewhat busy now, but I did want to let you know I'm trying to get your gas prices down.

-Russell

May 3rd Update

To the few readers that have stuck by this long, thanks. I apologize for not writing sooner, I've been busy (and frustrated) with work and every time I wrote a post it was either of poor quality (I enforce stringent QC standards here) or bitter.

All of that has passed now, as today is the anniversary of my entrance into this world. Lo, 24 years ago I appeared and changed all your lives into the magnificent things they are now... such eloquence...

For those that didn't know or I didn't see, I was in Houston for all of April training on our higher tier tools. This was a great opportunity to learn some neat theory, see family and enjoy God's country of Texas.

My last few days have been hectic as I have managed to travel back to Alaska, move to a new apartment and get back to the north slope to work in under 72 hours. Not a world record, but damn close.

End of February update!

Oh man, get excited for the greatest end of February update to ever occur in the year 2011.

Alaska is currently in a slow period of drilling activity, atypical for winter months since this is exploration season (why they won't let people drill in the summer when it's a reasonable temperature is beyond me; I think it's a passive aggressive method to prevent drilling in this area). As a result, we have plenty of engineers and have a rotation! My friend and I work opposite of each other for 2 weeks at a time. 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off. Yes, 2 weeks off.

"Russell, what can you do with a whole two weeks off?", tons of stuff! Sometimes I do stuff with things or even actions with items and/or people!

I tried to learn to snowboard this past 2 weeks, and am still paying through the extensive bruising on my glorious posterior. I decided to stick to skiing when my good friend Scoffey came up from Oklahoma. Naturally, I thrashed that mountain.

Other than that, I played video games and slept a ridiculous amount. I'm glad that the sun is coming back, the whole lack of sunlight wears on one.

However, the 2 weeks eventually ended and now I am back on the slope. All good times must come to an end (William Faulkner had a quote similar to that in 'As I Lay Dying' but I'm too lazy to google it at the moment).

Regards,

R

Back on the rig

Hey readers,

The oilfield booted back up right as I was leaving. We are about to resume drilling this new section of the well.

My time off consisted of eating, sleeping, skiing and skating. Primarily the first three, I only went skating in one of the public parks once.

I took on my first double diamond run this past break, and had moderate success the first time through. However, after a big snow storm, I was not as graceful the second time around. Either way, my skills are progressing and I'm having a great time in the process.

Will write more later.

Prudhoe Bay temporarily shut down

Well, the oilfield is shut down yet again thanks to a recent spill at occurred on the BP side of the Prudhoe Bay Oilfield. We're all just hanging around the rig until we can get trucks to transport old/new drilling mud.

The weather warmed up to 10 degrees, it's amazing up here. Definitely a nice improvement from the weather during my previous post.