A 2013 Roundup

I’m having a hard time believing that 2013 is coming to an end. I still write 2012 on things about half the time. Clearly last year I was in denial that another year had come and gone. This year I’m determined to meet the New Year with a little more acceptance. My tactic? A classic 2012 2013 wrap up.

Things that happened in 2013:

Four of my best friends got married to each other. (in pairs, don’t worry...)

I was very blessed to be able to witness the marriages of first Robert and Melinda in May and Alison and Will in October. Robert and Melinda had a small, beautiful wedding in the mountains that was probably the most fun weekend I’ve had all year. Alison and Will gave me a beautiful picture of what marriage means in God’s Kingdom. Even as I’ve been struggling to keep God in my day to day life amid this crazy life, Alison and Will always manage to remind me what life looks like following Jesus and why it’s worth such a wild ride.

Alison, Melinda and I all met freshman year of college and bonded over various adventures that have no place being written down. I’ve loved having these two ladies in my life even as I’ve moved very far away to Mexico. I’m also so proud to say that I can call each of their husbands true friends. I can’t wait to see how marriage treats them all and the lessons I can learn from them going first!

I travelled. A lot.

One of the reasons I chose to work in Mexico is because it would give me the opportunity to travel more. Luckily I’ve been able to take advantage of that more this year (and hopefully a lot more next year!) I started my year off taking a cruise with Katelyn who works for SLB as a wireline engineer in North Dakota. We started in Miami and sailed for a couple of days before getting off in St Thomas, then US Virgin Islands and Jamaica.  It was great! We relaxed by the pool, had some very tasty food, spent some time at the spa and did some shopping.

My next trip was to Colorado in May for Robert and Melinda’s wedding. Then in June I did fast tour through Colorado, Alaska and then Nashville for my cousin’s wedding. It was awesome to hang out with my family and we got some very classy family photos out of it.

I also traveled to Alaska in late August/September and then back to Colorado for Alison and Will’s wedding before hitting Vegas with two SLB girls from here in Villa, May and Letty. We had some classic Vegas adventures and did plenty of shopping and saw a lot of shows. It was a great way to end a year of travelling around, and I can’t wait to see where 2014 takes me!

I went back to school.

No, not for a masters degree or anything fancy like that. You might remember that I’ve been working on changing my position here from a Measurements Engineer to a Directional Driller. In July and August the company sent me to a 5 week school called Drilling Operations so I could learn at least the basics of the job.

It was a great course and I learned a lot about operations. Since coming back my responsibilities have gotten bigger but I’ve also had more opportunities to get the experience I need to make my job code change official.

I also got to meet a lot of cool people from all over the world and learn about how they do things in their locations. I have to say, it’s my favorite part of SLB schools. We manage to consistently hire some pretty cool people.

I changed my job code.

Yes, I’m officially a directional driller now. I can feel the changes already… My belly is getting bigger, my appetite is increasing, I suddenly don’t understand why my MWD won’t clean up after me, hitting on trainees suddenly feels appropriate… Just kidding. But really, it’s a big change and while I have nowhere near the experience to actually call myself a DD, I’m fortunate enough to be in a company where they’ll pay me like one even while making me do both MWD and DD work before calling me competent and sending me to the office…  That’s right, 2014 is scheduled to be my last year of working in the field.

While I’m excited to make the change to the office, I’m also beginning to count the things that I will miss about the field when my final 6 months are up. One thing I am hoping is that I can do a better job of documenting everything here. The field is a unique place and we have some very… different, shall we say… scenarios that happen every day to make for good stories.

Wishing you blessed 2014!