551 @ Lowney

My upgraded condo is signed!!!
I am now on the 5th floor, with two walls of windows, and a direct access to this :

this is the view I'll have from my living room windows!

"my" terrasse on the lower roof 5th floor level will have Asian inspired garden, sauna and hot tub

that's the "urban cabin" on the higher roof 10th floor, complete with fireplace, BBQs, kitchen,
pool table and a cinema room with giant screen

also on the roof, swimming pool with THE view of downtown Montreal
add to that a 4 seasons training pool with current and a gym on the ground floor

this is my new place, same layout as the other one, but a bit bigger, more windows and the biggest patio available directly on the terrasse!! with two steps to get on it which is always cool from a visual/design point of view :P

And the coolest thing is that this condo is unique! All the other models have redundancy in the building, but not this one. The units below are smaller with only one wall of windows; the units above are much bigger, with smaller patio and a price tag that would make your hair fall off!

Count on me to end up with the exclusive unit... ;)

I'm a girl again! :)

Since I had an afternoon to spend in St.John's before going home, I went for a walk on Water street... guess what I found... an Aveda salon!

So I went in and asked if they had time for a manicure... and they did :)

So I'm slowly turning into a girl again... the muddy scum that stained my hands for the past 3 weeks is history and I now have sparkly fingernails. YAY!

:)

in other news...

I'm in St.John's today
got off the rig this morning
will be in Montreal tomorrow at 7am
let's get this party started!

:)

♪ Adios en vaya con dios ♪

Thanx to the limited choice of tv channels on the rig and to my co-workers' strange taste in music, I now have a goddamn country song stuck in my head... 3 days of CMT country music channel, the only music channel available on the rig :S non-stop in the control van will do that to ya...

so all together now :

♪ I got my toes in the water, ass in the sand
Not a worry in the world, a cold beer in my hand
Life is good today. Life is good today. ♪

♪ Adios en vaya con dios
A long way from GA
Hey boss dome a favor and pass me the Jaeger
And I’ll grab my guitar and play ♪

could somebody call an exorcist please? it's an emergency...

TBA

When summer fog let out... winter wind and waves pick up...

Add to that day-flights only, so from 8am to 1pm, choppers have to be back in town at sundown and it's a 3h flight and only 2 choppers available to carry people when we're lucky!

means...

I
am
never
leaving
this
place
:(
ever!

my flight today doesn't have a departure time... if all the other flights like 5 of them that couldn't go yesterday and the day before come back to town before 1pm, then I might leave today... if not it might be tomorrow... or not...

E-I-E-I-O

There's a guy on board that's called Joe MacDonald... and they keep calling his name on the PA...

so every time they say Joe MacDonald call control, the voices in my head sing ♪ had a farm ♪ over the end of the message

:P

Time's relativity

These last few days are d.r.a.g.g.i.n.g.!!! it's not even funny!

I guess it has a lot to do with the fun ratio on board... when I get here the crew is at about 95% good... but as time passes and crew changes happen, that ratio slowly drops to about 20% when it's finally my time to leave.

That makes the beginning of my hitch fly by and the last week or so drag on forever even though I got lucky again this time and the worst possible scenario has been avoided, plus I only had to suffer the other major annoyance for a couple of days... but these were painful days which I am still mentally recovering from!

There is hope of a change though, when we go back to work for Husky we're working for Suncor aka Petro-Canada at the moment there should be changes in the schedules... I cross my fingers I'll get the lucky number and enjoy the job for the whole 21 days instead of only 2/3 of it.

I guess I'm just not a people person after all... though I prefer to say that I'm just very picky about who I consider to be "people" :P

hurray for me!

I launched.. and more importantly recovered... MAG 148 the rov that goes in/out of the moonpool without getting it stuck!!!! My first try and I nailed it!!!

this rov is tricky i.e. a pain in the a** to recover, because it goes up on guide wires. When we reach the height of the rig those wires become steel posts... and the guides on the rov tend like every other time to get stuck, as in jammed good, wont go up or down and we have to slide a weight on them to act as a hammer hoping they will go free at some point :S

Two tons of equipment, 2 inches of play is what it comes to...

and I didn't jam it! woohoo! XD

and it's looking good for Thursday weather wise... but unless the chopper gets here at 8am instead of noon, I will have to spend the night in St.John's the last flight on Thursday is at 1pm... and come home Friday morning ; first flight for Montreal is at 5:45am :P

4 leaf clovers anyone?

With the way we recovered the ROV this morning, we'll need a couple of lucky charms to survive the afternoon... *sigh*


:P

fact of life

when the wind blows so hard you suddenly walk 4 times faster holding on to your hard hat that went flying 2 times already today

when it's snowing, and piles of it accumulate everywhere

when the sun sets at 3:30pm

when the temperature is around -8°c but the wind factor brings it to about -8000°c

when all this happens on November 12th...

you know you're offshore in the North Atlantic.. aka the armpit of the world weather wise

remembering

on this day where we're suppose to remember the dearly departed... I'll just rant about mom nature who goofed big time on this one!

People should have a life span according to their greatness

awesome people would live forever

monsters, jerks, liars and other psychos would die before they can do harm

one day I will rule the universe and make things right

one flew over the cuckoo's rig

we came out this morning, innocently thinking we'd just keep on pecking at things on 172...
the night shift guys had other news... 2 re-terms!!! cue dramatic music here

the chinese fingers click here to see what it is on both systems have been banged up pretty bad and need to be replaced..

to do that we have to "unplug" the tether and its 500 connections on the sub, take the old CF out, put a new one on and these guys are designed to do the exact opposite i.e. not slip but grab on so they take the weight instead of the tether... very nice, until you try to remove one!, and replug everything.. hoping we didn't break any fibers optic or caused new faults...

we're halfway through the first one.. broke one fiber %&@$#!* and are now trying to find the source of a ground fault that magically appeared when we reconnected the wires :P

at least we're not in a rush... nobody's waiting on us to do something urgent...