Twelve days since my last post. I knew five had gone by, but the other week is just a blur.
The first five were my long change and I had made plans with my boy to get a jump on cleaning out the storage shed that my garage had become. In 1996, when the new guys bought my old company and I was made manager, I ended up working 14 to 18 hours per day, seven days a week, During this time, when my wife wanted to move something out of the house, it got stuck just inside the garage door. As the front got blocked, the stuff got pushed back until there was just a path around the table saw and over to my completely cluttered work bench or past the table saw to the back down the right side.
Typically, the time I decided to do this project the temperature went from mid 80's the day before to 105 to 112. I figured getting going around 7 AM would be good to beat the heat, but have you ever tried to get a 19 YO at that time of day? We'd be going by about 8ish and by noon to 1, I'd call it quits.
He did work diligently and we made a major hole in the stuff. It was a lot of sorting and the pile of crap to keep or toss was growing faster than I could make decisions. I'm a pack rat. but know from experience that the thing that has been sitting around for 4 years taking up space with no idea of what the hell you're ever going to do with it so it gets tossed, is the exact thing you will need in two weeks to complete a project.
Returning to my regular job, the temps dropped back into the mid 80's. I had one regular day, followed by a non-relief day where I had a twelve hour shift. On this day, the Division of Oil and Gas (DOG), after a year, decided to change some of the requirements for operation of a couple of our injector wells (the two best of course), the foreman was busy with a guy trying to get our pipeline plan up to date, so I had to figure out which wells we could keep running and still get rid of the water using the formulas of which wells produce the most oil and least water, balanced by which wells that produce enough gas to keep the that system flowing so our LTS (Low Temperature System) didn't freeze up. Then just to make life interesting, the Gas Company got pissed at us about something and turned of the readout that tells us the readings on inerts in the gas.
In order to sell gas, we have a ranges set to keep their automated valves open. The are parameters for BTU's and inerts (must be monitored closely), and CO2 and H2S (not usually a problem).
Without the reading on inerts (Gas CO) and wells getting turned off (DOG), it's been this was a fun week where intuition and juju played a big part in keeping things going.
It's been a fun week.
When I go back on Thursday, the foreman is on vacation so I get to look forward to two weeks of 12 hour shifts, being one of the guys from our site has to go over to our 23rd St. site to do line integrity testing.
Some good news, Thursday (float) and Friday are HOLIDAYS....double time shifts with 4 hours OT each day. The two things that suck are 1) I'm working days, so no shift differential and 2) by the time taxes get figured in, I'd probably take home more with just two straight eights.
For anyone who comes by on a semi-regular basis, thanks for not giving up. I really lost track of the time.
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