really almost done now

I just saw the title of my last post and had to laugh. I'm still working. I've really had it now. We should have been done two days ago. There has been a lot of sitting around, and I don't just mean me. These past two days it's like everyone is just sitting around. And I can't figure out what in the hell we're all waiting for. We were supposed to test the well two days ago, then it was Saturday morning. Nothing at all happened Saturday morning, at all. So then it was going to be yesterday afternoon and I was going to have to come back out to take some samples because the guy working opposite me hasn't done that in 20 years. I figured no big deal, I'll go to the house get a quick nap and when he calls I'll come back out. I woke up around 6pm and was wondering if I missed the call, I sleep pretty heavy and have gotten good at ignoring the telemarketers that call during the day while I'm sleeping. So after a few phone calls I find out that I hadn't missed the call and that they weren't going to test the well until 6am today (Sunday). Whatever, I figured I'd go to sleep and come out to work at midnight for my shift and sit around until the test. The test will only take an hour or so to run once they are ready. Well it's 6am and they haven't even started to get ready for it. They spent the night cleaning the rig instead. So help me, if they don't get to it this morning I'm going to lose it. I've heard stories of people going crazy after a long job like this and the last few days just keep dragging on and on for one more day and then one more day. I'm getting there right now. I've gotten to that point where I don't even care if I get paid for another day, really I just want to get the hell out of here. If they don't test on my shift, I'm going to have to come back out this afternoon for it. And then I want to rig our crap down and leave. What's even more annoying is that this is the only job our company has right now, so we have at least 3 other guys that could be here rather than me. But I guess when you're the one leaving the company, your priorities come last... make sure all the guys that will be around getting screwed all summer are at least happy going into it.
Just four more hours of work... spread out over the past 3 days.

almost done!

Just a few more days now. We should be finished the middle of this week. The well is finally producing some steam and people are getting worried that something will go wrong if we mess around too much. I'm thrilled, I can't wait to get out of here, I've been in Cobb for all together way too long right now.
I've been lifting weights a lot lately. Well, a lot more than not lifting weights... It gives me something to do. I've run out of pretty much anything else to do, and have found that I'm going to bed earlier and earlier each day (like around 1-1:30pm rather than 3-3:30pm) and as a result I'm getting up earlier before work each night. So about a month ago I started to lift weights before leaving for work each night. I've never been a fan for working out in the morning (and night is my morning right now...) because I'm tired and what-not. It hasn't been that hard though, the motivating part that is. It wakes me up too, which is nice. By the time I get to work I've been up for 2 hours and I've already worked out. I feel energized, which actually isn't a great thing because there's nothing to do with the energy once I get to work. But, I feel good. I'm just worried about keeping disciplined when I finish work and am on vacation! I have way more time to excersize but I find that I don't have any discipline for that sort of thing on vacation. Either way, I feel like I've finally gotten some use out the weights I bought and have been dragging around with me everywhere I go.

Details

I'm becoming increasingly frustrated at work with the lack of interest in any sort of detail about the rock formations we drill in. There are a few main broad sweepingly generalized rock types we find here. The big three seem to be Greywacke, Argillite and Greenstone. Now, these are really just types of rock and can easily be broken down further. For example, we officially log 3 types of greywacke, and this is still broadly over-simplified. Occasionally (not nearly as often as you'd think) I'm asked what we're drilling in. Usually it's either the driller or the company man asking. I'll start to tell them something like 80% greywacke and 20% argillite, and then I try to explain that there's this much type 1 and this much type 2 greywacke or if it's mostly argillite I'll start to describe it a little. The truth is, they don't care beyond greywacke and argillite. That's all they want to know. And I could understand the driller not really caring about any details, but the guy in charge? He should want to know at least a few details. I could show anyone how to tell between greywacke and argillite in less than a minute, you can tell from a glance how much of each of those you have. You should see how much detail we actually put on the logs, and no one cares. No one is even going to ever look at these samples we're saving for them ever again. Why even bother? You start to try to explain any of the details to anyone and their eyes gloss over. From what I understand, the project geologist (who only comes out like once a week) doesn't even know the difference between the three broad types of greywacke. I've only met him in passing, but it seems to me that if anyone knows the rocks here, that guy should. What if we had some completely incompetent geologist logging here? The project geologist would just take his word for everything! Scary thought, and even scarier is that no one cares. Oh well, I guess it just means less stress for me with no one really picking through the details.

Just when I thought things were good

I went for a drive today, thought I'd take some pictures because it was a really nice day. I almost got where I was heading when I shifted gears and the clutch pedal didn't come back up. I was lucky that there was a place right there to pull over on the windy road I was on. So I checked to see if I had lost enough fluid to be pulling air into the lines, and I hadn't. So I'm thinking, that's strange. I then tried pumping the clutch pedal by hand and saw hydraulic fluid running down the pedal inside the car, not something I wanted to see or expected to see. So I called my dad who said it's most likely the master cylinder for the clutch. So the good news is that I was only about 15 miles away from where I had my clutch work done last summer and I could drive there by starting in second and driving the whole way there in second. Lucky for me, I managed to get into 3rd so I wouldn't be holding up all sorts of traffic, but I got so excited to get into 3rd that I accidentally stepped all the way down on the clutch. I managed to take off my seatbelt and reach down and pull it back up without having to pull over or anything.
So, the car is in the shop and I have another crappy rental car (a Chevy Aveo or something... I don't even really know, I just know it's total crap) for the next few days. In other news, I was offered a sizeable raise to stay on with my current job rather than go to Taiwan. I of course turned it down as I've made a commitment to go, and I really don't want to be doing this job anymore. I'd already had the conversation with my boss about whether or not more money would make a difference in me staying longer or not and I told him then that no it really didn't make a difference. It just feels like salt in the wound to have my car break down an hour after turning down a raise. Oh well, things could be worse! I could have had to pay the $400 the mechanic's supplier quoted us for the master cylinder, he agreed to let me buy the part else-where (www.bavauto.com) for $55 instead.

Picture_4

Picture_4
Originally uploaded by jono1515.

There is a fan shaped tree on the top of this hill and I notice it every single time I drive from Cobb down to Middletown. Last spring I was driving this route everyday down to Santa Rosa, and I for some reason noticed it every day and still do whenever I drive by.

Picture_6

Picture_6
Originally uploaded by jono1515.

I've been wanting to take a picture like this for a while, I took one on a roll of film before this, but I haven't gotten it back yet. I think this one probably came out better than the other one will.

Picture_13

Picture_13
Originally uploaded by jono1515.

I wish this hawk had come out sharper, but I'm surprised it came out at all... I took this without a tripod with a 200mm lens with a shutter speed of like 1/125 of a second.

Picture_17

Picture_17
Originally uploaded by jono1515.

Picture_27

Picture_27
Originally uploaded by jono1515.

Picture_31

Picture_31
Originally uploaded by jono1515.

IMG_0007

IMG_0007
Originally uploaded by jono1515.

IMG_0013

IMG_0013
Originally uploaded by jono1515.

These two b&w pictures were taken with my digital camera, I had accidentally left the ISO at 400 so they both came out really noisy. They looked absolutely terrible, but I thought they might look a little better b&w, the noise would make them look like they were taken on grainy black and white film. I boosted the contrast and think they look ok now, not great, but good enough that I didn't delete them. And it also prompted me to buy some b&w film for my other camera. I'd put more of my film pictures up, but I send the film out to get developed and it gets sent back to my house in Tahoe developed with prints and I haven't been home in 3 weeks so I'll have a bunch (hopefully!) of film photos to put up when I get off this job!

The Big Here Quiz

Ok, So I'm at work and bored again, what else is new...
I found this today. Its a quiz to see how much you know about where you live. It has to do with watersheds and natural processes, so I figured with my background I should do alright. Out of 30 questions I got about 11 right, maybe 4 or 5 half right and had no clue on the rest. I should add that I did the quiz with where I am right now in mind, not my home in Tahoe... Although since I've only been there for a little over half a year I probably would only do marginally better. Anyway, it really made me think about how little I know about these places. Some of the questions I got right should be a given considering the work I'm doing here, but they still made me think. It gives you an awareness for the environment and how much we can take it for granted and how easy it can be to overlook it and the consequences our lives have on it.
By the way, the cool tools website is a great place to kill some time if you're ever bored... unfortunately, I've already read pretty much everything there. But it's very interesting, as is the rest of the Kevin Kelly website outside of the cool tools section. And the cool tools are pretty damn cool.
I also did something about the logistical side of my photography and realized that I'm spending a lot of money on film and processing. In fact, I have spent enough over the past half a year to have purchased a digital SLR camera. If I had a digital SLR I would no longer pay for film or processing, just to print the pictures I think are best. And as it stands right now I end up spending extra getting decent sized prints of my favorites so that's a cost I have now anyway. Of course this is a terrible time to be thinking of spending $600 on an entry level digital SLR because I'm trying to save as much money as I can before I quit my job and go to Taiwan. Also, I have about 10 rolls of film that I haven't used yet which should last me a few months... except that I'm going to be driving across the country and doing a lot of travelling which will inspire me to burn through film like crazy. So I'm torn. And I really like my film camera, I just don't like pouring money into film. Damn it!

blue-belly lizard

blue-belly lizard
Originally uploaded by jono1515.

small yellow flowers

small yellow flowers
Originally uploaded by jono1515.

Long nights

I am so not going to miss these long boring nights. It's 1am, I've been at work for an hour and a half right now. They finally started drilling yesterday morning so there is finally some work to be done. Or I thought there would be... we drilled like 50 feet on my shift yesterday. I got to look at 5 samples. That was the highlight of like the past week of work for me. So far tonight, I haven't done anything. They're drilling 6 feet an hour. I don't have anything to do, and I don't just mean as far as work is concerned. I really don't have anything to do right now. I have 3 books with me and I've read 2 of them, the last one is short but it's making me think too much. I've read all the news online and that's getting real old because every night it's the same depressing news. I haven't really been able to sleep much since I came back to work for this job. I'm working the night shift and haven't been able to get into the swing of sleeping during the day. I stopped trying to sleep late after the first day because it was just a waste of time, so now I get up and lift some weights because there isn't anything else to do. I've worked my way through a bunch of movies and I'm starting to ration them because it's looking like I'll be here for another two weeks. Right now two weeks seems like an eternity to me. I want to go home! I am not going to miss this job, one more month and I'll be done for good. I think one of the only reasons I lasted this long was because I wasn't here in Cobb the whole time. Mammoth was a nice place to spend the summer, and in the fall I was only here for a week tops and then got to go home. This winter I've been doing these short jobs in Cobb and it's been nice to go home in between, but if I had to go on any longer I'd go nuts. There just isn't anything to do here. There are some trails to hike on but there isn't any good scenery and honestly I just don't have time to go on long hikes. I get out of work and try to get to sleep around 2pm. That leaves me 2 hours to do anything, and I need to eat "dinner" in that time, so I try not to hike for more than an hour. You can't get far in an hour, I did 3 miles the other day but I felt like I was really hauling ass to get back to my car within an hour. And despite the nice weather it still isn't a very good hike, no rewarding view at the top or anything. Tomorrow I'm going to see if I can find a decent route over in the forest to run a 2 mile loop. I really don't like running on trails though. I miss the route I used to run up in Portland, it had a good mix of hills and flat ground. Maybe I'll move back to Portland when I get back from Taiwan. I really liked it there, I just didn't know anyone because I was hardly ever there for more than a few days. I wish it were closer to the ocean, that's about the only thing about Portland I wish were different.