Day 30

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday that was a pleasant surprise was we found out they had instituted a change with the water vendor, I’m assuming at least partially  based on what happened with us.  Going forward they are going to have the company scrub and sanitize the fresh water tanks quarterly (they changed their contract with them) and it will be done onsite so the gate guarding folks can watch it being done.  Very cool and so nice to know we were heard.  We also got a visit from our company support person and he brought us some donuts when he brought the water and said thanks for doing a great job.  That was really nice.  Speaking of water, we did really well this week only using about half a tank.  The X factor appears to be how many sinks full of dishes we do, and because we went out one night, and I cooked less, we didn’t do dishes every day.  Also the new popup canopy Lee bought for $50  is working great.  It extends our shade coverage during the hottest part of the day, which is much needed.

You can see the shade square it throws

If it’s not windy we can have both the tent and the awning which gives us even more shade

And the new tent was up just in time, because the day started out pretty hot, and by 2:00pm it was 93 degrees with a cloudless sky.  I worked outside between 1:00pm and 2:45pm and got so hot Lee had to make me take a break and come inside in the AC.  It’s fine in the shade, but this new policy forces us into the sun for longer periods and the gusty hot wind didn’t help as I was struggling with the heat.  Pretty soon I was sweating and feeling pretty flushed.  On the plus side. my legs will be getting that sun I was looking for, but I may need to bust out some sunscreen as this sun is quite intense.  Thanks for all the great suggestions on how to solve the gate problem by the way! (We think we have a winner, but I’m going to test it first before I make the big announcement. – Lee) Lee has a call in to the ranch owner to get permission to make this very minor modification to the gate, and our Account manager seemed pleased that we were trying to help solve the problem.  I am also glad I took my rings off because my hands got caught in the gate a couple of times.  The combination of heavy gate, gusty winds, and sweaty hands isn’t the best.

Right as I was typing that last sentence, the ranch owner stopped by and I went outside to handle trucks while they talked about the gate.  Lee was just starting to explain it when the oil company man coincidentally showed up.  The ranch owner immediately turned away from Lee and started to talk about the problem with the company man, who said he would put drop bars on.  Lee and I were both completely cut out of the conversation.  The ranch owner did ask why the new policy, and the company man stated that it was easier for all their gates to have the same rules.  The ranch owner, to his credit, said he didn’t care if the gate was shut all the time, but was concerned for me since the gates were heavy in the wind, which was nice.  The downside is now we are at the mercy of when/if the company man gets around to it and their solution is not our first choice.  It will actually increase the work load even more. This will require lifting the drop rod, walking each gate over to it’s open position, then dropping the rod before going back and doing the other side.  That will increase the time we spend wrestling with the gate even more on non windy days.  It will probably be the same or a little less on windy days.  Well, it is what it is, but I got to experience first hand what it is like when people make a change to the job you do every day and don’t even ask your opinion.   Not that pleasant of an experience, for us at least. In the meantime, Lee found he can use the chain to hold one side of the gate.  It  involves some bending down, but works in a pinch when it’s super windy.

Its hard to get the hook on the rings but its better than nothing

The ranch owner  had said he would stop and talk to us on the way out, but instead he used the ranch gate, watched me struggle letting a truck in, then took off. No discussion, no update.  Boy, I got mad.  And really, really fast.  And let me be clear, the ranch owner is a nice guy and has been very polite to me, but apparently he had more important things to do and I didn’t need an update.  And that’s what made me angry.  There is a pattern here with these jobs we have been taking (camp hosting aside) where they are hard work, low pay, and the expectation seems to be you will accept the conditions as is and shut up about it.  And for those of you who are perfectly fine with that, more power to you. I finally realized in that moment that I am just not.  I’ve worked plenty of low level positions in my life (security guard, waitress, monitoring station operator, secretary) under way more dire financial circumstances than these and I still felt I had a voice. In these temporary jobs I mostly don’t feel that way.  And you  have to understand that by nature I am a rule follower.  I have to force myself to stand up for myself.  I am much, much better at standing up for others, but generally when it’s me I let things go, and let things go and then blow.  So when I do get worked up enough to say something  I want to be heard. I don’t expect to get my way, but I want my concern acknowledged, and if possible addressed.  I think that’s pretty reasonable, but apparently in this world it’s not.  And I never signed up for that.

Lee of course has no problem at all speaking up for himself and I end up often being the “voice of reason.”  But I am getting pretty tired of that and standing out there in the hot  sun fighting that gate I was really tired of it.  And before I go any further I feel the need to kind of prove my case.  I almost got knocked off my feet a couple times today so let me show you what I am dealing with here.

This is the size of the walkway I use to bring the two gates together

Around that are these cattle guards and as you can see my foot can easily fall in so I try to stay on the walkway

Running back and forth AND trying to stay on that walkway is tough, plus these gates are heavy for me and when the wind was gusting I almost got knocked off my feet a couple of times.  The scampering back and forth doesn’t help as I really try to be deliberate in where I step.  Basically it’s like walking a balance beam holding something heavy with the wind pushing at you.  And it was very hot.

So I was upset, which made Lee upset, and we started talking about finding another gig.  Work is picking up in the area and since we are at the lowest wage we are pretty confident we could make more money.  Plus, we now know the questions to ask and could make sure we had a gate that fit our needs better.  I was close, I mean  really close, and the only thing that stopped me from calling one of the numerous job opportunities we have seen on the Facebook gate group was the young woman we initially interviewed with.  I like her very much and she has really tried to take care of us and I just didn’t want to do that to her.  So I took a deep breath and went back out to the gate.  I had three or four trucks lined up and  was struggling with the wind when Lee came out and said “Shut the gate”.  Since there were trucks in the general area I didn’t really understand but he quietly said “The company man he needs to  see it.”  (The company man was one of the vehicles waiting. – Lee)  So I brought the gate to center and of course it swung open with the wind, so I ran over to it and the company man saw me struggling.  He pulled up immediately, lowered his window, and said to Lee “The guy behind us is fixing this tomorrow.”  OK then.  And “the guy behind” was one of our favorite guys from the construction company so we got to talk to him a little and ask him if the drop rods he was going to install could be locked in both the up and down position.  No problem.  To his credit he looked pretty upset and he is fixing it first thing in the morning.  Well of course that made me feel better and in the meantime Lee rigged together our “Jim Jam” named after our friend Jim who had the idea.  Pretty awesome, and he even shot some video to show the difference.

Lee fixing the gate for me

He later used two of the smaller clamps.  The Jim Jam is flexible so I can push the gate but it’s rigid enough that it also keeps it in place when I need it to stay

As you can see I look pretty wrung out, but at this point  I was happy we had a solution to get me through the day

So here’s the thing.  The wind problem is solved and more importantly the work associated with opening the gate is somewhat solved because Andy, one of our readers who is a long-time gate guard, suggested we only open half the gate for pickup trucks which honestly never even occurred to me.  We have been doing that all evening and it is waaaaay less work than opening and shutting the full gate.   So I have to ask myself was getting upset worth it?  Would this all have worked itself out if I would have just sucked it up and sat on my feelings? I think the short answer is “no”.  They wouldn’t have put rods on the gate.  Lee wouldn’t have reached out for alternative solutions.  We would have just suffered along and knowing us that wouldn’t have gone well. I think getting angry is OK.  I think not being satisfied with the status quo is equally ok, as long as either state isn’t all the time.  Great change comes from discontent. Almost every invention ever made came from someone being unhappy about something.  So again, it’s totally OK if you’re not a person who gets crazy about these sort of things.  And it’s even OK if you think we are wasting our time or making ourselves unhappy for little gain.  I don’t believe that, and it’s my life and my time.  To the contrary, I think I have to agree with Lee that a little more discontent is called for.  If I was OK with the status quo we would still be living in New England freezing our butts off right now.  The fact that we are not is a good thing even if everything else isn’t perfect.

This is actually the absolute best solution because only opening half the gate is half the work! The little trucks (the bulk of our traffic) can drive through this and it forces them to go slow.  So thanks Andy!!!

Thirty days into the job by the way, and new policy aside it has been fine.  We still have tons of projects to work on and the hours seem to be working OK for us both.  The key for us has been both of us to go to sleep when it’s dark outside.  We did discuss changing that to make the workload more equitable, but neither of us wanted to try to go to sleep when it was light out.  Both of us  have worked third shift a time or two in our past and it never went well.  Our current sleep schedules of 9pm – 4am (Lee) and 4:30am – 12pm (me) are close enough to our regular sleep schedules to make it work. We are really leery of messing with that.  The money is fine as long as we are getting a reasonable amount of downtime and with very few exceptions that seems to be the case.  Hopefully once this gate problem is solved we can go back to things being comfortable.

This wasn’t all we had to do all day by the way.  While all this was happening we were also getting the paperwork filled out for our summer job, which we are pretty excited about.  Because the job is for a large electric company the HR process is pretty involved.  We had to agree to a credit and background check (they said they don’t actually do the credit check, but we don’t care, our credit is great) , coordinate a drug screening and a physical, send three additional references, one of whom needs to be a former supervisor, and sign a non-disclosure. I read the last pretty carefully and it relates mainly to computer programs, processes, and company proprietary information.  I will need to be a little careful when I blog about the job, but it seems pretty clear this language is universally used for the power company employees, which makes sense. Nothing in there about pictures thankfully, because that would be a bummer, so I should be fine as long as I continue  my new policy of not mentioning the company by name. Since we have to print and mail this information (their policy) we are also printing out all the tax information.  All we are missing at this point is one form from Fidelity, but I think I have enough to get started.  Update:  Lee found a free fax service online and “faxed” our email so it was all done before we woke up!!  Nice.

And I found time in the day to read a really outstanding post by our friend Howard from RV-Dreams about balance in the lifestyle. (Howard and Linda are at the big RV show in Columbus, OH, this weekend, by the way, doing free seminars on full timing. If you’re in Cbus you should go to the show. Attend a seminar. Meet Howard and Linda. Buy an RV. Sell all your junk, quit your job and hit the road. Or just tell them we said Hi! – Lee) He talks about the need to really look at work/life balance and the fact that even after 12 years they need to keep an eye on things.  The post reviews their balance history and spoke to me on many levels and as is often the case with his posts they come at a very good time.  We need to remember that we are only a couple years into this lifestyle and obviously we still don’t have it figured out.  (Not me. I have it all figured out. – Lee) And that’s OK, because even people who have been doing this a lot longer still make adjustments.  It’s comforting and I really appreciate the fact that he wrote this.  And finally, just to show the day wasn’t all pain and misery here are a couple pictures of some lighter moments.  When the sun went down, things were much, much nicer.

I made Lee a new recipe;  ham and bean rollups. His response “Why are you making me eat me prison food?”  lol. They weren’t that bad, but his reaction made me laugh. (This is her idea of “lighter” and “not pain and misery”. – Lee)

And we had a beautiful sunset

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Day 27 

It was Super Bowl Sunday and once again Lee let me change the schedule so I could watch the game.  I was nervous about wearing my Patriots shirt in the heart of Texas but a couple of the guys actually talked to me about it and spoke with respect.  Since there are some New England haters out there I thought I would take a moment to talk about my team.  

We moved to New England in 2001.  I was new to the area and new to the New England culture (which is quite different than the Midwest) but I did bring a love of football and an appreciation of the game.  Since the New England games were always on in the area, I watched them and soon became a fan.  Living right between the Bengals and the Browns I loved pro ball, but never had a team.  I had the Ohio State Buckeyes of course, but at the pro level I always just appreciated good play.  And I loved the underdogs.  So in 2002 when this little known duo of Belichik and Brady won their first Super Bowl I was hooked.

It wasn’t even really Tom by the way, despite his good looks and amazing game play, it was Bill.  He reminded me so much of my dad and his mantra of “Do Your Job” really spoke to me.  Plus, to be honest, having a sports team to talk about when working in a male dominated industry is a good thing.  So at first it was fitting in, then it was admiration, but the year the Brady broke his leg and the backup quarterback stepped in and they did so well, it was true respect.  The same with this year.  Say what you want about “Deflategate”  but those coaches did a hell of a job with a 2nd and 3rd string QB that kept them in the running despite the 4 game suspension.

So I am really really happy they won.  Not only won, but set so many records, first QB and Coach with 5 Superbowl wins, first game won in overtime, largest deficit (by far) overcome to win a Superbowl game.  Plus it was great to see my favorite sportscaster Howie Long on the field with his son becoming only the fourth ever father/son team to both win a Superbowl.  And when Tom knelt on the field at the end, I’ll be honest I had tears in my eyes.  Because these players to me represent what makes this country great.  Any given Sunday, anything can happen.  Teams that shouldn’t win, do.  Players get hurt or sidelined and unknowns step up and become stars.  Grit, determination, and yes, pure love of the game can make all of the difference.  And even if you “hate” a team you can admire their play. It is uniquely American and I love it.  And I love the Patriots and am very proud to be a fan. (And for those of you who don’t care about football, or can take it or leave it, do yourself a big favor and take five minutes to enjoy this. – Lee)

I am writing this right after the win, so I’m on a little bit of a “high”.  Thankfully things were pretty slow.  Lee actually went to bed because he was tired and I thought the game was done and thankfully there weren’t many trucks so I only missed one of the two-point conversions.  Yes, the world of oil drilling goes on, even during the Superbowl, although I have to wonder if they would have shut down for the night if Dallas was in the Superbowl!

It was quiet all night except for a black cat that was making one of the sensors go off.  That’s a little unsettling, having the chime go off but not seeing what’s setting it off.  I like cats and it occurred to me I could make friends with it, but then I realized that it would just hang around and keep setting off the alarms which is not a great idea.  Frankly, I am surprised that a cat could live out here with all the large raptors and coyotes, but it is jet black so maybe that’s helping it.

Pretty cat, but anything that sets off the sensors is  not good

Day 28

– – Today started out as another pretty  slow day and just to show that things can change quickly they did.  Around 7:30pm we were handed a printed email from one of the company men that stated our old company man (who we liked very much) had moved onto another rig and he was our point of contact.  The email stated that starting immediately ALL gates associated with this oil company were to be kept closed, and opened and closed for each vehicle.  Well, that’s not good news.  I keep it closed at night, at the request of the ranch owner, but the  traffic is much lighter than in the daytime.  Lee gets probably triple the amount of traffic I do and this will  increase his task time significantly.  (Right now when folks are already in the database it takes less than 30 seconds to check them in and you can usually do that while sitting under the awning which protects us from sun and rain.  Going forward, the process will involve walking to the gate, unlocking, logging the vehicle into the tablet, opening the gate, waiting for them to drive through, then manually moving each piece of gate back to the center and clipping.  This may not sound like a huge  deal, but takes a very simple 30 second task and turns it into 90 second task, at minimum, and possibly longer. It may end up not being a big deal, we will have to see, but it kind of stinks to have things changed up when you have established a comfortable routine that works well. After checking around it’s probably the result of a new safety  policy, but if that’s the case I actually feel less safe when I am standing right next to the gate when the  big rigs go buy.  Much better to flag them in from over by our rig. – –  (We asked, but haven’t heard exactly what the point of this new rule is. To be clear, we do not make ANY decisions as to who comes through the gate. ALL we are supposed to do is log the traffic, so there doesn’t seem to be any reason for this, other than it prevents someone from “sneaking” through the gate if we go inside for a few minutes. I don’t personally care what the reason is, all I care is that it has tripled our workload. Trace has more on that, so back to Trace…-Lee) 

And in case you are thinking “You are getting paid to work, so what’s the difference?”, well that is sort of fair and kind of not. As you can see from the latest spreadsheet our hourly rate has steadily gone down as truck patterns have  spread out and most days even our adjusted hourly wage is less than minimum wage.  One of the things that still made that OK was the amount of downtime within most hours and anything that increases the workload and consequently reduces the downtime must be taken into the  equation.  For example,  in the time it took me to write the paragraph above that is between the dashes  I went outside four times to unlock the gate and check a truck in.  So it took me roughly 20 minutes to write one paragraph.  Hard to get into a creative flow under those circumstances.  Well, like I said, we will have to see how it goes. Here’s the spreadsheet for last week.  You be the judge.

Day 29

I forgot to mention yesterday that we received a call that the  fuel for the generator would be a day or two late.  Lee checked the tank and we were doing fine with 1/3 of the fuel still there (a couple of “solar only” afternoons helped) and we were very happy to get  a heads up so we could have adjusted if necessary.  A couple people have mentioned using our own generator, but while we could certainly use our generator if our batteries got too low, that wouldn’t work for the outside lights because they are hard wired into that generator.  The lights are the big thing, because running this gate without them is not fun, and unfortunately there is no substitute for that.  (It’s really, really REALLY dark out here when those lights are out. Not to mention using our generator eats our propane. – Lee) 

Lee spent the morning with the new process in place and he was not happy.  He did some time studies and for him it used to take 20 seconds to log in a truck (30 seconds if it wasn’t already in the database) and now it is taking at least 80 seconds, and if there’s any wind at all, closer to 120 seconds. This significantly reduced the amount of time he was able to do other things. The gate is very difficult to manage in the wind.  You have to manually close both sides, one at a time, and the wind will push them in either direction.  So you have to gauge the wind, which is gusty, not steady, and push one gate, then push the other before the first gate swings away from the center. (The gates swing in both directions.) I am actually better at this than Lee, mainly because I am willing to scamper to catch the gate.  Lee not so much.  (I am a little on the large side for scampering. I mostly amble. Sometimes I strut. – Lee) It’s tough to explain, so I took a series of pictures to show you.  It looks kind of funny, but try doing this 50 times a day. (It’s actually more like 80 times a day.)  This is all one instance of trying to get the gate closed while the wind was blowing.

First he swings the left side to the middle,

Then walks over to swing the right side to the middle. As you can see, the left side is waiting there patiently. And the a little gust of wind comes along….

….and blows the left side open while he brings the right side to the middle.

This is FUN!

Soooo, he walks over to retrieve the left side while the right side waits patiently……

….aaaaaand the right side gets blown open.

Wheeeeeeeeeeee. It’s like being at a theme park, except NOT.

Anyone want to guess what happened while he was getting the right side?

When it goes over the ditch you have to grab it close to the edge which requires some muscle because you are pulling the entire weight of the gate right at the hinge. Plus you are standing on the cattle guard so balance isn’t that great. Those bars are about 8 inches apart, and there’s a 2 foot drop. That’s a leg breaker for sure if loose your footing. I try to avoid this scenario at all cost.

Soooo, bring back the right………………

……and while you go get the left, the right swings back in the other way.

Won’t stay in the middle and nothing in place to make it stay there

If a gust hits when it’s this close it can still get away from you. Need to be careful too because the gate is heavy. You’d be amazed how hard that gate can hit you once it starts to swing.

Success

So, the above took about two minutes or so.  More excitement, same money.

After the gate closing we sat down and talked about it.  Lee had put a question out on our gate guarding Facebook group and the general consensus was, yes it does happen, but it is rare and very unpleasant when it happens. A few people said “suck it up” but many others said they would never take a job where the gate had to be manually opened or closed every time.  One person even said to make sure I took off my rings because his wife’s finger ring got stuck in a gate and was ripped off and worker’s comp refused to pay anything because they were independent contractors.  I actually had heard that story before from our neighbor down the road, but I appreciated the reminder and as of right now my rings are off.   In any event, sometimes it’s the oil company, and other times it is the ranch owner, and sometimes the ranch owner can supersede the oil company, so maybe we will get lucky there.  It is definitely a question the more experienced folks ask prior to taking the contract, and a big lesson learned for us.  After we both spoke about how we were feeling, I laid out our options as I saw them.

1. Do nothing and live with it.  This might work in the short-term but we still have a couple months left in this gig and it was pretty unpleasant for Lee. (I hardly ever think that “do nothing” is a solution. There’s always room for improvement, and while I believe in balancing effort with return, there’s almost always something that can be done. – Lee)

2. Talk to someone at the gate guard company and try to get it changed.  Lee really wanted to do this, I thought it was an incredibly bad idea.  He felt we had nothing to lose, and even thought we might ask for more money since we were on the bottom of the pay scale as it is.  I pulled our contract and looked at the language and it is very specific that we have to guard the gate however the client wants it done.  So not only do I think it will accomplish nothing, but I also think it will overspend what little capital we have managed to earn with these folks and possibly damage our long-term relationship.  Lee was much less concerned about that.  (Only from the standpoint of having a relationship where I am being taken advantage of is not a relationship  which I care about damaging. – Lee) As a side note this is sort of an ongoing conversation we have been having, and although I have come much closer to his way of thinking, I can’t look at every one of these jobs as unique entities, especially not this one since there is such a tight community. (Just to clarify, my problem is not what they want us to do, my problem is that they gave us an assignment with very specific parameters for a very specific price, and that price was partially justified by the ease of the work. The parameters have changed, the work has tripled, the price should change. If I hired a contractor to build a porch, and my order didn’t involve a railing, and then later I decided I wanted a railing, the contractor isn’t going to throw the railing in for free. Not even the labor. I happen to think that “scope creep” is a serious problem, and while I agree that a little extra for free is good for building good will, I don’t think that applies here. – Lee)
   
3. Passive/aggressively fight the rule. Follow the rule for a few days then go back to the old way and see what happens.  Slow down work so it’s an inconvenience to everyone and see what happens.  Lee was 100% against this approach.  He simply was not going to change his work ethic in response to a rule, no matter how he felt about the rule. I, on the other hand, was surprised I was actually thinking along those lines.  For many years I have been a person who handed changes to others.  I have seen first hand their reactions, and although I like to think I did a better job of communicating why we were changing things, I also know that sometimes I made people’s lives much more difficult.  In those situations, employees don’t have much power but they do have some and I have seen many changes simply fail to “stick” because the employees behaved in the ways I described.  Sometimes it made the employers really think about what they were asking for and sometimes it just wasn’t worth the fight.  It’s never been my way of handling things either, but now that I am in the situation I really get it.  Everything was fine, and now it’s not, and no one even bothered to explain why.  That’s tough to swallow and the “you’re lucky to have a job” mentality has never worked for me and probably doesn’t work for most people.

4. Leave. The nuclear option is always an option, but in this case pretty extreme.  We don’t have another job to go to, for one thing.  It would damage our relationship with this gate guarding company and probably cause us future problems with other companies. Some of these work kamper jobs are like this.  They aren’t all stand alone.  Plus, we need the money.  If we were doing this for extra money that would be a different conversation, but the first problems still apply.

5. Swap our shifts. This is what we ultimately decided on.  Night shift has always had the gate shut, and because there is tons of down time in between trucks it’s not a big deal.  It will give Lee all the time he wants to edit, and I will go back to squeezing my blogging and recipe book project into what downtime I have.  I’m not sure how great that is going to work out for me.  I’ve known all along that I had the better end of this deal from a traffic and free time perspective, and it is going to stink to give that up.  Still, of the options I can see at this point it is a place to start and we can always choose another one if it doesn’t work out.  Plus, who knows?  Other folks with more reputation and emotional coin may fight back against the rule and it could be overturned.  Again, this is definitely not the norm and since it was done for multiple sites, other folks are also being affected. We will see.

I will just say one more thing though.  Every time I start to think, “this is getting boring”, or “I am running out of things to write about” something like this happens.  It’s like God/Universe says “Challenge accepted!!”  Seriously, I have got to stop thinking that.

Update:  After Lee proofread this he asked why I thought I wouldn’t like days.  That was easy.  I just barely think this gig is financially worth working nights and that is because of all the free time I have.  If I change to days and all the free time goes away, at that point you might as well get a job making more money.  Lee at this point changed his mind about swapping shifts.  He didn’t see any reason why both of us should be unhappy, and he thought any benefits he might get by working nights would be outweighed by actually working nights.  In that case he would rather do the gallant thing and stay on days, but he is keeping the option open to say something to the account manager.  He promises not to throw a grenade on the situation but it is important that he lets her know that he thinks this sucks.  So it’s status quo at least for now. (I just need to figure out a diplomatic way to put it. Diplomacy is not my strong suit. Why burn a bridge when you can take it out with a ballistic missile from orbit? Seriously though, any suggestions on how I can make my point clear without doing any damage are welcome. I’ll even make it a contest! Best submission gets a free packet of desiccant in the next package of bacon bits that they buy! – Lee) 

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Day 20 

One thing that’s different about the nights (other than the 40 degree temps) is the well drilling fluid.  I’m not sure what the big trucks carrying this is for, but they are coming at least once an hour.  What this does essentially is stop me from really taking any naps.  Staying awake is my preference, so it’s OK, but I did like the 1:30am -3:30am lull that really allowed me to chill.  Ah well.  It’s the job. At least we aren’t as busy as the gate down the road.  They get at least 5 trucks an hour all through the night so not really any break down there. One of the guys working on the water well did stop by and say they were pulling the heavy equipment for another emergency job tomorrow.  He looked slightly apologetic, but I really didn’t know why.

Interesting side note, I am a very curious person, but in this job that curiosity is extremely muted.  Partly it’s because we can’t see what’s going on, partly it’s because when people do talk to us they use jargon we don’t understand, and I also think partly because of the nature of the job. I don’t need to know what’s happening back at the rig to check trucks in and out and although that’s never stopped me in the past, in this job, maybe for the first time, I don’t care that much. I’m not sure if that is progress or it’s not, but it is new.  Anyway, I had a hard time falling asleep and then woke up an hour early at 11am.  Turns out moving the equipment also included using the backhoe to put dirt on the water line right in front of our bedroom window and then moving a huge flat bed in front of same window and rolling the big equipment on it.  OK,  I’m up!  I suppose I should have paid more attention when he said he was “staging” but not sure what I could have done about it even if I had known.

Lee snapped this pic of what was going on outside my bedroom window. No wonder I woke up!

One last thing about last night.  Our data finally rolled over so we have started a new tracking program.  Lee created a spreadsheet (I have obviously infected him with my particular brand of crazy) (No, no, I was already crazy long before. I used to have a spreadsheet for everything in the world. I love data. I could tell the kids to the penny how much it cost to run a light bulb or leave a computer monitor when nobody was in the room (they didn’t care), or how much money the furnace burned by the minute (they didn’t care), and how much it cost to stand in front of the fridge with the door open for 30 seconds (they didn’t care). I knew to the tenth of a mile how far away things were, and what was the most efficient route to get there depending on time of day and traffic density. Don’t give me crazy. I was the leading distributor of crazy for New England for fifteen years.-Lee) Every night we are writing down how much data we’ve used by device. I am responsible for my iPad and iPhone, and he gets the info for his iPhone, the PC and the laptop in the morning. Imagine his surprise when he saw I used 3 GB on the computer last night.  I watch  Top Chef and they have an online portion called Last Chance Kitchen .  I was way behind on seeing who got eliminated so I watched all nine 10 minute videos last night.  Well actually 10 since I accidentally closed the window when a truck came and loaded one twice.  Turns out only watching part of each video doesn’t matter.  You are charged for the entire video regardless of how long you watch it.  I really didn’t understand that.  I mean I like the show and everything, but not enough to burn an entire day worth of  data in one hour.  (80 GB / 30 days = 2.66GB per day alloted).  It was good though, because the tracking sheet’s job is to highlight issues like these and discuss them.  Lee understands I don’t know what he knows so I am learning. (If you ask nicely I will give you a more detailed breakdown of our data usage in the near future. It’s not like I’m doing anything else. I’m also working on a water audit because I am a complete nerd. – Lee)

And I probably should mention here that we do take advantage of free wifi when we are able, but those chances are a lot less frequent than people talk about, at least in our experience.  We have had limited success with McDonald’s, Starbucks, etc but we have had  very good luck with libraries.  Unfortunately, Dilley is so small it doesn’t even have a library, let alone one with internet.  Plus, using other people’s wifi really sucks up time.  Lee has to sit there, sometimes for hours, while files upload/download.  We both like libraries, but that’s much different than setting a program up out of your rig and then doing whatever you want until it is completed. We will do it though when we are in a data crunch if able.  But it is definitely not something you want to build an internet usage strategy around in my opinion.

Day 21

All of a sudden we have tons of things to do.  The W-2’s are flowing in so I need to start preparing the taxes, I am getting some final few recipes together to try and finish those out, getting caught up on all the shows I missed when we ran out of data and I started a new book called Seveneves which is excellent. Seriously, if you like science fiction, this book is good!  Forty pages in I didn’t want to put it down.  I read some in the afternoons when it’s my turn to be on duty and the traffic level and weather make it nice to sit outside.  It’s not great having to put a good book down every time there is a truck, but when the sun is shining and when the traffic is light it’s very nice.

Thanks to everyone who has been sending me recipes, by the way.  I really appreciate it.  I’m trying to fill in these last few holes with very specific recipes, but I promise I’ll try them all eventually.  I’ve been giving that some thought actually, since I have finished some of the categories.  I’m going to keep trying new things for sure even after the book has been done.  It’s been a lot of fun trying new recipes and keeps cooking from being a chore.  I would like to try more complicated recipes though I think.  I stuck to very simple ones for most of the book, because they lend themselves more to the RV Lifestyle, but now that I have learned some new techniques I would definitely like to try some “fancier” dishes.  That can wait until another day though, for right now I really want to get this done.  I’ve been trying these new recipes for over two years now and it will be nice to cook whatever I want without feeling like I need to always try something new.  And yes I know that feeling is 100% self-imposed but I can’t help it.  I don’t know what the opposite of procrastinator is but about most things I am just that. (Believe it or not, there is not technically a one word opposite of procrastinate. However. If you wanted to create one, following the rules of latin by which procrastinate was created, then it would be innunctiation, but that’s kind of hard to say, and it won’t catch on because people are lazy. You could throw out the latin altogether and use a greek prefix, and make it precrastinate. I don’t like that either. It sounds too easy. I suppose antecrastinate would work, but it lacks a certain zip. My favorite is concrastinate. – Lee) The sooner I get something done the better, which is why as soon as the last tax document is in place that will become the top priority, even though I know I can file an extension.

Speaking of taxes, our mail service (which scans the front of envelope so we can look at it online and see if want it shredded, sent or opened and scanned) received a letter from the IRS and I’ll be honest, I was a little worried.  Last year was the first year I ever filed a Schedule C, and although I had a good accountant helping, you never know if a mistake was made.  Thankfully we had the mail scanned and it said the IRS was paying us $47 in interest on last year’s tax return.  It took forever for us to get the check because our account was flagged because of the move to Florida and we had to go through a pretty complicated process to prove we were real people and not fraud perpetrators.  Seriously complicated.  The questions they wanted answers to on the online version I couldn’t even answer so eventually I just called them on the phone and it took almost 45 minutes to verify who I was. Apparently there have been some fraudulent returns in the Florida area and our move and refund flagged us.  Anyway, I’ll take the $47 but I am surprised by the amount. The refund check wasn’t that much money, and the payment wasn’t that late, but maybe they assessed themselves a late payment penalty..lol.   I was just glad no mistake was made.  I felt extremely confident in the deductions we took because we were VERY conservative, but no one likes to get a letter from the IRS.  This year I have no idea how it is all going to turn out.  I had a little income carry over from my old job, we had two jobs with taxes taken out, and one job where taxes were not and some business income.  Putting all that together is probably going to be a little complicated.

I also have been meaning to mention that Lee is sleeping very well.  When I traveled for work he never slept that great without me there, but he is sleeping very soundly.  I am sure subconsciously he knows I am safe and in the rig, so it’s OK for him to sleep, and he does seem to appreciate not being woken up by me throughout the night. I always was a light sleeper and the difficulty getting my temperature regulated has only made that worse.  It’s a small room, so as hard as I try to get up quietly I was disturbing his sleep.  If nothing else he’s sleeping well and between that and the project he is working on he’s been in a very good mood. (Fear not. I’m sure my good mood is only temporary, and in no time at all I will be back to my lovable cranky self. – Lee) 

Finally, here are last week’s numbers. As you can see, the pattern shifted over the weekend and now we are getting 1-3 trucks every hour, even through the night.  Part of that is large trucks bringing drilling fluid.  That seems to happen 1-2 times an hour at night now and the other part is they are still using the very noisy water pump which breaks down every night and they are in and out a few times trying to get it up and running.  Hopefully that traffic will stop as soon as the well is done, but in the meantime the in and out is a little tough at night.

Even though the number of trucks per hour went down (it was actually quite slow on Sunday) the hour rate (which I am basing on hours worked) has gone down as well. I’m really not a fan of making less than minimum wage, even when I was a salaried restaurant manager I wasn’t OK with it.  When we had down time I really was OK with the adjusted hours, but now that the trucks are coming round the clock I have to call it what it is.  Even though the work is very easy, there is a reason for a minimum wage, and personally I don’t think being an independent contractor should change that.  Actually you really should be paid more, because in that scenario you are responsible for the employer’s piece of the taxes.  Your mileage may vary on that one, but that’s the way I feel about it.  It’s not a deal breaker for me, because really we both like the job, but intellectually it bothers me. (At some point in the future we’re going to have to have a longer discussion here about full timing and income, but today is not the day. I’m not procrastinating, I’m just gathering data. – Lee) 

Practically speaking,  the biggest consequence of trucks throughout the night is no opportunity for naps anymore.  It really is better that I stay awake, but I did like having the option to nap a bit between trucks. This is off the table though now, because generally the 2-3 trucks I get an hour are spaced pretty evenly so I might have 20-30 minutes between them. It’s not awful or anything, but I did like the long stretches of quiet between trucks at night and the fact that most of these trucks are the bigger ones is a little jarring when I go out there to open the gate.  I really need to pay attention, because its a narrowish space for those big guys and I make sure I stand well back from them.  The weather did warm back up though and stayed in the 50’s which was a good thing.  40’s and below is chilly especially when you are opening and shutting a metal gate.  The 50’s I can definitely handle.

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