Quick update on the last few days.  I chose Sunday and Monday as my days off.  Had a nice time at church on Sunday.  Testimony meeting here was uplifting and I felt impressed to bear my testimony.  Following church, I did some reading and enjoyed a couple of general conference talks.

The Poulsens invited me and my roommate to dinner again tonight, so we went upstairs and ate with them.  They are really a nice family, I hope that you will have a chance to meet them.  Devon, my young roommate is a good guy, but quite a talker.  He dominated the conversation for a couple hours with his exploits as an amazing race car driver, a championship bull rider, all-american athlete, and a cop-charmer.  I call him "Devon the Magnificent".  Not to his face though.

I bailed early and went down and talked to George for a while on the phone.  He was out in Connecticut with Mikaela and her family having a good time.

Monday I did some wash and got a few groceries.  I also talked to Tim Ricketts from Halliburton regarding the directional drilling engineer position.  We set a phone interview time for Wednesday morning.  He said "it [the interview] shouldn't take too long".  I was encouraged by that.

Tuesday was a discouraging day.  I got on the call board at my appointed time, and went the whole day without getting a run.  I called the office several time to see what was going on, and they said that the day had been very slow.  I found out later that BNSF is doing some repair work on some of the lines and that was likely the cause of the slow-down.

I was somewhat pacified by that, but when most of Wednesday passed without getting called, I started to panic.  Here I made this decision to come out here for work, and thought I had a good interim job that would allow me to find something better.  While I was wallowing a bit in my misery, I got called in at 7:30pm to go up to Canada.  The run turned into an overnighter, logging 15 hours of work.  That was awesome!  I was with some great people from Canadian Pacific and the time flew by.  I didn't get home until 11am the next morning.

Driving back, I saw an enormous bull moose by the road.  I startled him as I drove by, and he took off in the opposite direction   He was probably 6 feet tall at the shoulder, and his legs were so long that at a lope, he was probably doing 30 MPH.  I estimated his horn rack was some 6 feet across too.  I so wished that I could have got a picture.  What I'm told, moose don't display much of the silly personality of the moose of "Rocky and Bullwinkle" fame...  They are aggressive, dangerous creatures that can smell fear and will eat you with their enormous, venomous mandibles...  Actually, I'm not sure that information is exactly substantiated, but I do know that a moose can ruin your day.  (No George, I did not dance with it.)  And they are quite plentiful up here, along with deer, skunks, jack rabbits, and various rodental pests.  No bear (they prefer more wooded areas) but there are mountain lions.  GO, COUGARS.

I got some sleep Thursday afternoon and went back on the board Thursday night.  Didn't get any call though.   Looking forward to getting out on Friday and Saturday.

Almost forgot to mention - had a very good interview with the guy from Halliburton.  We spent most of the time talking about the lifestyle and responsibilities of the role.  None of what he said particularly surprised me because I have seen similar circumstances out here.  Seems that the role has good long-term potential.  He is going to schedule a face-to-face in Casper WY within the next couple weeks.  Meanwhile, I continue to look for other opportunities.

I miss home but I'm so glad we can use video calling to stay in touch!