We got punished...

Yep, that's right. We are bad. Bad to the bone!

Here's what happened.

Me ( Agi) : We're out of milk.

Aaron : (sigh) Fine, get your passport.

One hour later on the other side of the border in Germany . We enter the second awesomest store ever ( the first one is called Coffee and Pantyhose, I dare you to ask why...) and start loading stuff into the carts. Half an hour later rich in groceries but poor in money we get into the van. Now you have to know that in the protection of the swiss dairy farmers we aren't suppose to import more than 1 lb of beef per person and more than 10 liters of milk into Switzerland. But no one ever checks....until now. We are pulled aside by the border patrol and asked to open up the back. He leans in to take a look then steps back obviously puzzled by the sight of the avalanching food and stuff. He dives in to look for the contraband. I should be ashamed but I'm not. He declares that we have 8 lb more beef and 15 liters more milk than we should have. By now I feel like a drug dealer busted by the cops. Aaron has to follow the agent into the office to pay a fine. I know that, he knows that but the kids don't. They are watching their father disappearing into the office with the metal bars on the window. Now at this point I should've said something comforting to my children. But I did not. Instead here's what's coming out of my mouth.

" Now y'all have done it! Your father has to go to jail because you guys eat too much! "


I know. I'm awesome.

Aaron comes back and has to explain to the kids that mom isn't really mean, she just has a very warped sense of humor and/or had a temporary brainfart.

At this point I'm LMBOWPMPATST ( laughingmybuttoffwhilepeeingmypantsatthesametime ) all the way home.

I know. I'm also cool.


THE END

Our first Swiss Christmas...

It's quiet now and our first Swiss Christmas is almost put to bed. Bittersweet, given the circumstances of the last three days. I don't think the words we read in Luke regarding Mary's travails and the Savior's birth ever seemed as rich or poignant as they did last night. Agi has been a study in stoic strength and resilience.

But a quiet, introspective, beautiful day, this 25th. It started snowing late last night, as it should on any Christmas Eve, and continued through mid-day today, leaving a thick fluffy blanket of snow on everything. Kids were up not-so-early, surprising me, since I didn't expect them to take my admonish to "sleep in" to heart. I know I never could. Up at the crack of dawn when I was their age. But they held out, and we all padded downstairs as a family in our new opened-on-Christmas-Eve PJ's.

Presents were a flurry of new clothes, most emblazoned with the BYU logos everyone had been asking for--a way I guess to do the two-birds-one-stone thing-- swaddle themselves with the comforting emblems of home, and set themselves apart at the new Swiss schools they attend. Never been prouder to see my kids so excited and anxious to set themselves apart as "BYU kids" among all their respective peers. Ali especially.

Everyone got a small HD video camera, either the FLIP version for easy uploading or an indestructible hand-held. All purchased weeks ago when documenting today seemed like it would be so much more enjoyable and forward looking--documenting the last Christmas with just the current team of 4, together for 10+ years. I guess this team will stay longer than we planned--probably forever.

In spite of the turmoil of this week, Agi still made hands down a fantastic Christmas feast--a homemade honey-baked ham that would put the usual suspects at "HoneyBaked Ham" to shame, and a delicious pot of her famous stuffed cabbage--a Hungarian Christmas staple in our family. Love this woman.

This late afternoon after the wrapping had been sizzled away in the hearth's fire, and the New Donkey Kong world had been fully explored, dinner eaten and the kitchen cleaned, we cleared the table and had two plus good solid hours of playing a family board game. Love these times with the kids. SO many great, funny conversations spring to life over haggling about roads and resources in the Cataan world or racing trains across Europe. Mental note to get the original "Ticket to Ride" --Zug am Zug", considering we're in the backyard of the original :-).

And now the day's over. Another Christmas down. Another year closer to whatever comes next.

Merry CHristmas to friends and family the world round. We appreciate so much the love and support we've felt from so many of your these past days.

Have a wonderful New Year....

Aaron

FInally, a night out on the town...

The wife and I finally decided to check out the Zug nightlife. Or lack thereof. WOW, for a Saturday night it was DEAD. But hey, we found a surprisingly decent Mexican restaurant. And after having sworn we'd never go to the movies in Switzerland (20 bucks a ticket will definitively change one's opinion of what passes as quality cinema these days), we decided to pop into the Seehof and watch 'R.E.D.'

And it was freakin' AWESOME. And I don't think that was just because I hadn't been to a movie is Switzerland since last April. Seriously great movie. A little 'by the numbers', but it hit every number perfectly. I hope they make more.

Natch, I still HATE that in Switzerland there is some unwritten codified LAW that every theater must break the movie in two and practically blare at you from the screen to go buy popcorn and ice cream during the completely inappropriate "intermission". Come on! This ain't 5-act Shakespeare in-the-round! Its a freaking 100 minute movie. We don't need a break. And you ruin what little enjoyment is left after taking out a mortgage for tickets by cutting off mid-scene, turning the lights on, and flashing popcorn and coke like a psychedelic flick from a 60's interrogation camp. Come on Switzerland.

Much as I am dying to go see Paranormal Activity 2, I won't (at least here) because what better way to massively screw up a tense edge-of-your-seat scary flick than by turning up the lights halfway through the second reel. Idiots.

Although I guess that for every 100 things that Switzerland gets completely right, natural law dictates that they have to spectacularly ruin one thing. And that one thing would be the movie-going experience.

Tells you how great the movie R.E.D. was, that even after all that, we loved it. I see myself watching this one twice a year. That good.

17th Anniversary...

The weekend is finally here. Looking forward to celebrating our 17th Anniversary tonight. 17 years from Nov 6, 1993.

Naturally I am sweeping Agi away to a romantic day at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. And by Paris I mean Mulhouse and by Eiffel Tower I mean that "Walmart of France", Carrefour. Yep--we have some food shopping to do, and the Mulhouse Carrefour is our cheapest bet! 90 minutes away, across the border from Basel.

Tonight we'll go somewhere hopefully a little more romantic. BUt at least I can say in 25 years, when everyone has forgotten the particulars, that I took my wife to France on our 17th wedding anniversary! :-)

So in 25 years, this:



Will hopefully be remembered as this:



:-)

CREEEEEAAAAAAAAK....

That's the sound of me shaking the rust off this blog. As my last post from 700 years ago stated, we were looking at moving to Switzerland. then we did. 3 months ago!

SO I guess my blog needs a new title. Somehow Budapest Palmers doesn't quite cut it anymore, though we still consider the "Pearl of the East" our adopted hometown (having lived there longer than any other city in my life...).

New titles... Maybe "Swiss Family Palmer"? KInda cheesy, and a little on the nose, but maybe. I'll chew on it...

BUt we are LOVING Switzerland. My job as Managing Director of Sisel International's Europe operations has planted us firmly here, in Central Switzerland, about 35 minutes south of Zurich.

We arrived on August 4th, really deja-vu-ing the same experience from Budapest in 2003. 6 Palmers de-camping at the Zurich airport looking like refugees with 16 pieces of luggage. DIfferences were pretty clear, though--now older, taller kids, more jaded about the international travel experience. And we had a cat with us. One that has now traveled the globe with us. Picked her up as a newborn kitten our first month in Budapest. So she's been killing mice in three countries & two continents now. Now I'm picking up dead Swiss mice off the back porch every morning. Still as cool and as gross as ever. Particularly with the heads missing. Serial killer, this one... A grumpy, middle-aged serial killer...

So here we are--three months in, and fully embarked on this new adventure with a great company, very scenic backdrop, and new adventures piling up every day.

I'll try and do a better job of documenting them...

AP

Time for my bi-annual post...

I'm getting better at this! Only 7 months since the last post. Yawn. Where was I?

Oh yeah. The Budapest Palmers became the Nephi Palmers and may very well become the Bern or Zurich or Lucern Palmers by this summer... Jury is still out, but is looking promising. DOn't ask the kids if they are excited about going back to Europe. All of the yowling and screaming and pain I heard from them when we came home from Budapest pales to what I hear now at the possibility we might move to frickin' SWITZERLAND. These kids are nuts. This would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us, in a lifetime where we've had some cool opportunities already. Switzerland. UMMMMMM. The hallowed place where chocolate gets it's own grocery aisle.

I'll be headed to see the lay of the land next month for a few days, and I'm lucky to have my brother join me for a few days...

So if all goes well in the next few days (company budget-wise) this might be our next view from the living room:

The ONE movie I am most-est looking forward to!

BOW before the almighty disaster movie to end all disaster movies!

Update from Washington....

Yowza! It's really been 2 months since we last postified something from this blog....

Well now I have a couple days to kill in these here Seattle parts, so I'll get right to it....

Yep. Seattle. More 'pontosan'-ly (fer yew magyars out there) Kent, WA, about 21 miles from the Needle itself. I arrived yesterday after an arduous 2 and half hour drive from Tigard OR. Tigard, you say? Why yes, Tigard. I spent the last 11 days in Tigard at my very first roadshow sales event for Little Giant Ladders. Had an awesome time. My feet would disagree with me night after night, but I just tell them to shut up and deal with it. The feet will start to feel better after they get used to this new stuff...

I was in hopes to escape the record temps in Utah for some nice weather in Oregon, but alas, Portland temps were in the mid nineties most of last week, and I saw none of the nice cool rain I'd been hoping for.

That show wrapped up Sunday, and next day I was off farther North to these parts--where I'll start my first solo show this weekend.

The Palmers back in Nephi are all in relatively fine shape. The ones left at home are probably in a little better shape since Dad isn't around to muck up the schedule--from what I hear the boys are doing fine--they enjoyed a trip to Lagoon last week with their band cohorts--a reward for about 7 hot days put in at various parades around the Valley.

Aidan celebrated a birthday a couple weeks ago--I repurposed my 2 year-old ipod touch and handed it over to him--from what I can tell, he's thrilled with it. He wanted a cell phone, but since that sure as h-e-double hockey sticks wasn't happening, this was the next best thing. He can email his buddies to his hearts content from the house on it, and I am pretty sure that's all he wanted a cell phone for anyway.

That's all for now. Here's a pic from Saturday night at the Multnomah Falls....

What an AWESOME Month of May its been....

Ahhh, where does the month go?? Been a typical May so far--kids are wrapping up school, the garden preparatory weeding is coming along nicely, nice little bit of rain here and there, and oh yeah, I got laid off, along with 30 other guys... So that's fun. Nothing like looking for work again, after thinking I'd found the perfect home.

that's actually true--loved NOV, loved the work, had just finished my training and was ready to deploy to the Far East, when the bottom truly fell out of the market. Thanks Global Recession! Apparently the contraction in oil demand has been steep enough to make most major companies cut back on new investments in the cool cutting edge drilling technologies (ahem, NOV). So most of our division was hosed. And I understand the company line--tough to keep 40 guys on the payroll when there just is no where to send them for 10-12 months. I've been on the other end of the table, and while it is certainly worse to GET laid off, being the one bearing bad news is no picnic either. So bummer. Being fully trained and qualified though, I guess its nice to know we're first on the callback list when work picks up, but who the hell wants to wait or CAN wait around that long? Meh...

In a nutshell, Agi and I are really enjoying yet ANOTHER chance to reevaluate where we are going, and I think I'm full circle back to schooling. I guess there is no bigger neon-flashing sign than this--that I'm supposed to go back to BYU and wrap up those pesky final 3-4 classes. So that's the plan. I'll keep working part-time while I knock the schooling out, and get back into the Reserves. Once the degree is out of the way, we'll go from there.

So that was our awesome Month of May .

IN way more fun family stuff--this development gave me the time to go hang out with Ashton on his Heber Creeper field trip. IT was fun being the only 'Dad' chaperone in the class. I got to be in charge of him and 2 other boys...

The actual 'Heber Creeper' train and route were a MASSIVE disappointment. I've heard for years now how cool the ride is, from Heber City through Provo Canyon. The actual ride was a major letdown. Get on the train, pull out of the station, creep along the backside of the Deer Creek Reservoir for 1 hour at 15 MPH, grind to a halt before even hitting the Canyon and all the supposedly spectacular views, then back up and creep back to the station. What a rip-off. Paid 6 bucks each to creep along in a straight line for 10 miles, then back. Might have been a thrill for the locals I guess, but after 'train-ing' it through Europe, this was a huge waste. Couldn't hold a candle to the ride from Budapest to Ljubljana. Both Agi and I are really missing Hungary right now. Happy to be home, love Nephi, love the schools, but there are just tons of little every day things that remind us of Hungary...

But the time spent with Ashton and his buddies was fun, and I guess that's the point....


Probably the only decent view from the train....


Lone Wolf and Cub hanging out in the bitter frigid crosswinds that are only experienced by screaming down the tracks at 15 mph...

Rainy Saturday morning-- the perfect time to get caught up...

Been a while. Since the last post. Not for the nagging though--not a day went by really where I didn't hear from one internal family member or another to POST SOMETHING! Got caught up in wrapping up training at work, umm, washing the dogs, painting bathrooms, umm, and whatever other excuse I can come up with...

Oh yeah--Agi always ends each blog post request with a resounding rejoinder of "make it funny!", so in the interest of keeping her happy, here you go:


Courtesy of my MacBook Pro's "photobooth" program... This is my new 'Cletus Palmer' look... I figure I take so much good-natured crap from extended family now for living in Nephi, that I'd throw them a cliched bone to fit the stereotype. No problem--whatever keeps them from moving down south to the best-kept secret in Utah... Nephi rocks.



Back to my blog-delinquency excuses----Mainly I think I just got tired of sitting down to the computer and being overwhelmed with the urge to vomit out obscenities at the Obama administration. I definitely don't/didn't want to become one of those tired sites, where all content is consumed with whining about the direction our country is headed. Though on that front there is MUCH to whine about.... I'll just try and keep it to a minimum...

SO--that pesky update that Agi has been bugging me to write for 3 months now....

Wrapped up the training program at work two weeks ago. Finally. The end couldn't come quickly enough. I am now for all intents and purposes qualified to go out on an offshore rig in Australia/Malaysia/Asia/Middle East and do what we do. Granted, I really look forward to being the junior guy for a while to get my bearings in off-shore life, but I've got the basic tools down to at least muddle through. Right now I am enjoying the time off while waiting for an assignment, and realizing that I have fully transitioned from a corporate life complete with meeting, suits, ties, powerpoint presentations, and employee reviews, to one of "new low guy on the totem pole", albeit in the awesome world of OIL. Its with a hugely successful, established company, in a new division that is perfecting cutting edge technology, and I'm in at the beginning. So happy times, hopefully, after a rough year...

Got my 2008 taxes done without a minute to spare. And by "got my taxes done", I mean got the accountant to file the extension on the last possible day, thereby pushing the day of reckoning to August. Taxes. Awesome.

Had an awesome week with the family, immediate and extended. Tough to ascribe the adjective 'awesome' to any event surrounding a funeral, but that is what it was. Grandma Solie passed away, after fighting off medical problems for the better part of 20 years, and it was good to get together with the entire extended Solie clan and see cousins again. Already planning a big "Salem Days" get together in August. It really is ridiculous that we all live here in Utah now and don't get together with the cousins that made muggy summers so much fun so many years ago. The Holland Clan is awesome.

Whaaat else..... Oh yeah--props to the other grandparents, the Hughes, on their 60th wedding anniversary, three weeks ago. 60 years she's put up with that guy :-). Love 'em. Hope to get to 60 with Agi. The over-under on that happening without me being murdered in my sleep is about even right now, and I'm hopefully going to put off that fate for as long as possible by being a semi-decent husband. I get pretty good marks, usually :-)

We also got a new puppy. A papered Golden Retriever we officially named Maximimus Attila, or Max for short. We are such puppy whores, apparently. I'd post a picture right now, but don't want to get up and go find the camera... Take my word for it, he's cute. Almost cute enough to make up for losing Jack to a nice family in the Inland Empire. With work for both Agi and I and school for the kids, Jack just wasn't getting all the attention a Vizsla puppy needs, and was making life hell for our neighbors during his lonely daytimes. So, with the help of Jared in SoCal, found him a great home with a developmentally disabled teenager who can devote all time and energies to him 24/7. He's in puppy heaven right now. NOt the real Heaven--the one in Menifee, CA.

In the meantime, we'll make do with Max and Midnight, our other fat lazy black lab. She's fun, active, and yet too apathetic to make life challenging for the neighbors. SO the perfect dog. I can picture her hunting though--"hey girl! GO get the bird! Looks up annoyed--'go get it yourself, fat guy...." ehhh.

So that's it in a brief nutshell. Caught up. Now that I've shaken off three months worth of rust, and have some indefinite time off, I'll blog a bit more frequently.....

Road Trip!

Just pulled in to a Colby, Kansas Motel 6, off I-70. I am trekking across the country with Aidan to collect a big wooden trunk/coffee table that Agi and I had made in Hungary. Family friends of ours agreed to haul it home for us in their container, as it wouldn't fit on the pallets we shipped last May. It's in Missouri, and in looking at the calendar, I knew I'd have to get it now or wait at least two months for my work schedule to clear up.

So naturally everything went wrong today. We had planned to leave as soon as we woke up this morning, but actually woke to a cold house--our furnace went out. By the time we got a repairman lined up (the circuitboard was shot) we didn't leave the house until 11. Not too great when we had the first 729 mile leg of the trip in front of us...

And naturally I forgot to pack the camera--meaning no photos for this little travelogue. Which sucks, since we passed some breathtaking sites--Capitol Reef National Park, Vail, Aspen, etc....

Not too fond of Vail now. Got caught in the mother of all traffic jams, in the middle of a storm, and crept forward 12 miles in two hours at the top of the Rockies, through the Vail Pass. Means we didn't get through Denver until after 8 PM. Once clearing Denver though, all traffic magically disappeared. And I mean DISAPPEARED. We had the highway to ourself for the remaining 212 miles between Denver and Kansas. Apparently there is nothing worth visiting past Denver, despite the brochures we picked up proclaiming the stretch of I-70 between Colby & Topeka "America's Main Street". I wouldn't know. We drove there in the dark.

I've had a blast with Aidan--torturing him with the music of my youth. Specifically for this trip I loaded my ipod with tunes from that lost period of the eighties, with a few choice cuts from the seventies as well. I covered the gamut, from cheese like Eddie Money (Take Me Home tonight) and Rick Springfield (Jesse's Girl) to classics from Kansas and Springsteen. And all points inbetween (hello Nightranger, Bon Jovi, Asia, and Toto...) Most of these tunes (with the exception of Springsteen's finest) I hadn't even heard since Jr High in Payson, so that was fun... Aidan handled it pretty well--thumbs up to Eddie Money and Alphaville, not so much the Asia...)

Ah well. Leg two starts tomorrow, as we stop in Granby, Missouri to pack the van with our stuff and visit the Burdens. Then on Monday its a six hour detour south to the Denton TX area to drop in on Janene and Bill. Provided they ever decide to respond to the emails I sent informing them of our desire to crash their house... :-)... If you read this Janene, call me at 435-213-7198...

Signing out from ice-cold Kansas. Seriously. Its like below zero right now....

Inauguration aftermath...

Nice....


...and which party cares about the environment??

The era of peace and prosperity has begun...

With a WHOLE LOTTA CLASS!



Seriously, I saw this live yesterday and was utterly disgusted with the hordes of losers who had the classy manners to actually BOO an outgoing president. Say what you will about conservatives and their distaste at having a pseudo socialist lightweight as commander in chief, they have been extremely supportive of the guy and respectful as he begins his term, with some columnists even being seduced over to the dark side by the charming personality of the new president.

Funny, and more than a little hypocritical, of the lefties to now blather on and on about "unity" and coming together as one America" after they all went DefCon 1 when Bush was elected and spent the next 8 years throwing every vile epithet they could at the guy. Yeah. Now we are all magically one happy country when THEIR guy gets elected. And the funny thing is, respect or at least respectful disagreement has been exactly what the right has been offering up. And that'll continue.

I am not unaware of the historic nature of the event--our first black president is a big deal, and symbolically means a great deal to the entire planet. As the symbolism fades, and he has to really lead, I do sincerely hope he continues on the moderate course reflected by his keeping Robert Gates on as SecDef, and his backing away from the instant pullout from Iraq he promised at every turn on the campaign trail. I've always thought that reality would set in once he started getting his daily intel briefings.

That being said, I give a big thumbs up to the outgoing commander in chief. Despite his failings on the domestic front (huge new spending in medicare, inability -no thanks to intemperate democrats- to reform social security, and blase attitude toward vetoes that allowed for profligate amounts of government spending) he did get the big items right. We didn't see another attack on our soil, got two very qualified originalist conservative jurists on the Supreme Court, and you have to love the guys absolute willingness to do what he thought was right, regardless of public opinion. Based on the actions of the crowd on the Mall yesterday, ignoring American public opinion is usually a wise choice.

So good luck GWB. Enjoy retirement in Texas. I am fully confident we'll see a different sort of retirement than the one on permanent display by Clinton--that involves flitting about the globe on a private jet paid for by Saudi money, taking money from every despot on the planet for his "Clinton Initiative", and being seen with one skanky ho after another at yet another hotel in yet another foreign capital. You stay classy, Bill!

On a personal note, I took a month off from these updates mainly because I was tired every day. for these first couple weeks of January (through last Friday) I took advantage of an offer to go into our company's shop and help tear down and gut incoming pipe from the field, all in an attempt to really get an insiders view of how our system works. It was kinda fun--becoming a blue-collar joe. Yep, uniform, grease, heavy lifting, operating heavy machinery, and cutting stuff up with big-ass grinders was fun. But left me comfortably tired at the end of each day, and more than willing to just trudge into the house and watch the tube. And prepare the occasional Sunday School lesson.

I've got two weeks off now before getting back at it, so I'll probably write a little more. I don't lack for material. Like this:

Ashton came into the kitchen over the weekend one morning with a very heavy, sad look on his face, obviously troubled with something really weighing on his mind. I took a break from scrambling up the eggs and crouched down in front of him...

"What's wrong buddy? How are are you feeling?".

"Dad", he whispered, kneading his thoughts and words very carefully---

"When Barack is sworn in on Tuesday, will we have to start calling breakfast, Barack-fast?

Can't make that stuff up...

Merry Christmas to all....

Merry Christmas everybody. I'm just enjoying the end of a nice long Christmas Eve. Everyone is trundled off to bed for a couple of hours now, and being that I am still on somewhat of a night-owl schedule, I'm the sole sleep-survivor. I have to admit it is just nice to sit here in the quiet dark of the living room with only the glow of the tree in the corner keeping me company. Peaceful. I took the above photo just now, trying in vain to capture a bit of that peaceful solitude, but I doubt it comes across the same. No matter. Know that after a hectic fall & early winter, it feels nice to just sit back and relax, and reflect.

I'm grateful for a wonderful family. I really have it good in that department. 2008 really brought Agi & I closer together in ways we'd previously glossed over or grown far too accustomed to. She's my ultimate Rock. Couldn't have made it without her this year. Tonight we had a very traditional Hungarian CHristmas dinner of her stuffed cabbages and homemade bread, and just sitting there looking around at all the kids' animated faces and listening to their excited chatter, I realize that this is it--this is the only real important thing in life--the people gathered around this dinner table in this house. Ultimately, Nothing. Else. Matters. I'm blessed to have them, and I'm blessed to be their Dad and Husband.

We are looking forward to closing the books on 2008 and jumping in to 2009. I'll wrap up my final stages of training in the first quarter and get into a regular Asia/Australia/Middle East rotation by May. I'm excited for that. Also looking forward to FINALLY knocking out those last 2 classes at BYU.

We love Nephi. We love the quiet. We love the long hikes in Salt Creek Canyon & Nebo Loop with the dogs. We love the little solitude that being down here affords us.

Grateful for my new job. I love that it lets me go out and see all different parts of the world in all its cacophoneous glory, and then come home to quiet and rest. Seriously cool.

Ahh heck. I'm grateful for a lotta stuff. Right now though, I'm grateful I can go get a couple hours of sleep before getting roused out of bed by the kids.

Merry Christmas everybody.

Aaron

The greatest prank call EVER...

OK this is funny...

Stay out of the doghouse this Christmas....

I can see the light at the end of the Hitch....

Just a quick update from my rig work. I'm now on the downside of my two-week hitch in California. I'm all done by Tuesday night, and fly home Wednesday. Just in time for about two months off (theoretically)--which is a welcome respite after working 4 out of the last 5 weeks. Before anyone says "awwww, poor you! didn't we ALL work 4 out for the last five weeks?" I say ha. My weeks were 12 hours a day, 7 days a week :-) SO yeah. I'm looking forward to this time off :-)

I'm still amazed at the whole process of oil extraction. I always had vague ideas of the process (rotating pipe into the ground while pumping in fluid to flush out the debris created from the rotating drillbit). But man. I'm in awe at how complicated it really is--there are a hundred different variables affecting another 1000 different moving parts, all MASSIVE in size, and all vitally important to ensuring that the other parts work together in harmony, to ensure that this round hole gets deeper and deeper, moving through layers of strata that can be punishingly hard to drill through.

Its fun just to be up on the floor, 70 feet or so above the ground, and watch it all unfold. All those metal stairs are great exercise too :-). I was leaning over the railing the other night, looking at the mud below. Speculating with one of the guys how soft the mud would be in the event we fell off, and how many bones would break. Then we looked up at the guy on the "monkeyboard" (the platform at the very top of the derrick) which sits another 90 feet or so above us. Now THAT guy would be messed up if he fell... And he's up there wresting with 90 foot lengths of 4500 pound pipe stands....

These guys are a different breed up here--typically easy going, fun to josh around with, and all aware of the fact that if something breaks and flies off, someone can lose a limb or head, in an instant. Everybody has their stories, and some of them are pretty hair-raising. It is just interesting to be a part of. Also THE most un-judgemental people I've ever seen. So freaking different from anything else I've ever done.

But anyway. That's that. Looking forward to getting home and just being home for a while.

Life in Taft, California...

Spent my first shift on a actual rig last night. My crappy Blackberry camera really can't do it justice--this thing is MASSIVE.

Its been an eventful month since my last post... IN short order I (or we, as the family case may be)...

1. Finished up my classroom training after returning from Scotland.
2. Went right into a 2 week hitch (14 straight 12 hour days, with rig pay...) at our 'command center' in Provo, learning the ropes of monitoring systems from rigs around the globe
3. Spent 4 fun-filled days in Menifee, CA with jared and Emily for Thanksgiving
4. Started my current 17 day stint in Taft California at our test/training rigs with Oxy.

Couple notes--Thanksgiving was a blast. Spending time with Jared & Emily only served to remind how much we miss them. Hanging out with them is like meeting up with your best friends from old high school days, only better. The kids had fun too--although Ashton's infatuation with all things Nintendo WII now has me a little concerned... He went a little notes over it, for an eight year old. Ali craves time with her girl cousins (I wonder why????) and Aidan added to his growing collection of infatuated little girls vis a vis Natalie. His so good with them. I chalk it up to his gentle nature and kind demeanor. that, and the chicks or all ages just dig the guy. I am worried about these boys of mine.... Both of them had older girls hitting on them in Hungary--reason #2435 that it was ultimately a good idea to come home to Utah....

I don't miss movie prices in California--no 4.50 early matinees there--we all went out one night to see BOLT, in 3-D, and while the movie was pure throwback fun to classic Disney flicks of the past, I felt a little violated by good 'ol Cali at having to cough up 77 bucks for 6 tickets. GAAAAAH! And Holly wood wonders why people are going to the movies less and less--HMMMM 3 guesses, you Mensa geniuses...

We headed back to Nephi pretty early on Saturday, in order to beat the Zoobie hordes who would invariably return to campus either Saturday or Sunday. This, in hindsight, was a wise move. Sunday night, in looking off at I-15 from our upstairs window, it was BUMPER TO BUMPER TRAFFIC, MOVING AT 35 MPH. In FREAKING NEPHI. We saw nothing but tailights as far as could be all the way north. And all those cars didn't come from Scipio or Fillmore, which tells me traffic was heavy like that probably to Cedar City or St. George.

The original plan was to come back late Sunday afternoon or even on Monday, as I still had a full week off from work (I love this two week on/two week off schedule) but that was shortchanged when my hitch to California was moved up from February to now. So, after only a week off, I had the unenviable situation of driving back from Menifee on Saturday, only to get on a plane to Burbank early Monday morning.

THAT flight was fun. Not. Here I am with a million Delta miles, upgrades up the wazoo (ie I haven't flown in coach on a domestic Delta flight in about 3 years...), and I get STUCK ON SOUTHWEST! OUT OF A DELTA HUB IN SLC!. That's what I get for having a last minute ticket, I guess.. To make matters worse (in addition to the standard Soutwest cattle call seating cluster%$^&*...), I had to fly to Phoenix first. Making a 70 minute flight to Burbank a 5 hour odyssey. Heck, I could have driven from Nephi in eight hours, and that would have been more relaxing.

But I digress. I am finally out on a rig. My two compadres and I went through the one-day California rig safety training, required of everyone--from the engineers to the first-time roughnecks-- who will go onto any rig in the state. So. I finally a good idea of what prison school must be like. Bwaha.

I'm now on a schedule from 530PM to 530AM. Until 16 December. SO lucky me, I get to spend my 37th birthday (man 37 sounds OLD!)

On the plus side, I'll have about 4 weeks of time off waiting for me afterward....

I'd post something political, but I am still in denial over this whole Obama thing. Maybe later....

I love the Onion....

Best recap yet of the election aftermath...


Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

All Hail Dear Leader of New American Soviet Republic...

Come on, it had to be said :-) Just prepping the ground for when the "wealth gets spread around"....