Ang's Journal

Well, we haven't even gotten a full work week into our glorious new Administration & here are three ways that I, a pinko Commie liberal, have personally experienced getting owned:

• Earlier this month, I was invited to join the Board of a local environmental non-profit, the Uncompahgre Watershed Partnership. I attended a really great briefing on their big watershed restoration project for 2025 - a plan to protect & restore a type of habitat called iron fens. Iron fens trap carbon, increase water retention, & sequester heavy metals, improving water quality & water flow stability while providing a minor buffer against climate change. But, one of President Trump's first acts on Monday was to suspend spending under the Inflation Reduction Act, which was the funding source for this project. Therefore, this project is now in limbo.
  
• My boss & I had a frantic phone call this morning regarding concerns from one of our Native American employees: Navajo folks are getting caught up in ICE sweeps & the Trump Administration is questioning the birthright citizenship of Native Americans. (You really have to stop & admire the irony of that for a moment.) We are debating what to do to keep our three Native American employees safe while they go about their personal & professional business in the land that their ancestors have occupied for tens of thousands of years.
  
• One of my friends, who identifies as non-binary, reached out to me in the midst of a panic attack on Wednesday when, as part of their company being acquired, they were sent an HR form asking them to self-identify their gender identity so the acquiring company can use the information for "federal and state Equal Employment Opportunity record keeping". They finally decided to be honest & identify as non-binary, but what a world where someone has to weigh their honesty, self image, & mental health vs. a sense of safety & financial stability.

We are making America GREAT! /s

It is time for my favorite annual internet event: Fat Bear Week! Click the link & rejoice in the glorious fatness of the bears of Katmai National Park.

I have noted with mild irritation that - effective October 1st - all my various savings instruments reduced their interest rates by 0.5%, right in lockstep with the Fed. They never delay with reductions but always dawdle on raising their rates to match Fed changes. Grumble grumble.

I had a work client give me a really nice gift today. It's the nicest thing any client has ever done for me. Don't believe the news - the world still has nice things in it!

One of those nice things is The Bible Project, a nonprofit, crowdfunded group out of Portland that provides tons of tools for learning more about the Bible. They are currently doing a once-weekly, yearlong podcast series on The Sermon on the Mount. They dive deep into every word, every phrase, & every nuance, & I've learned a lot.

Sleep: So last night, I did the SAME THING as the night before – hot shower right before bed. Fell asleep around 10:30 PM, but woke up at 4:15 AM & stayed awake. I finally gave up & got up around 6:15 AM. 5¾ hours of sleep ain’t gonna cut it. I feel out of it.

Program: Went to the 7 AM meeting this morning & was thoroughly annoyed by the experience. Came home & prayed on my knees after eating some breakfast.

Work: I didn’t go to work today – not enough sleep. Mental health day.

Food: I had early coffee w/cream, then ate keto casserole & drank a big mug of bone broth around 9 AM. Then around 2 PM I went to Park Tavern & had a burger, a devil on horseback, sweet potato fries, & a Coke. At book club this evening, I had hot chocolate & a cookie. Keto fail. Alas.

Exercise: I was discombobulated when I finally got up, & couldn’t remember what my workout plan was for today. I decided to walk to & from York Street. 6,440 steps / 62 minutes active. No formal workout, but I did see Dr. Spallone. He did some massive adjustments to my left elbow, left shoulder, both scapulae, upper back, & neck. It sounded like a string of firecrackers. Then I did some nerve rebuilding (the electrified gloves). My neck & back feel much, much better, but I have a headache.

Mood: Very low mood today. I burned all my energy making it to the meeting, making it through the meeting, & making it home. I feel better after the adjustment, just very tired.

Grats: 1. Neck & back feel much, much better after adjustment. 2. Book club was lovely, as always. 3. I have my doggos back for a week!

Sleep: Last night was below average. I was in bed just after 10, asleep fairly quickly, but I woke up at 5 & never got back to sleep. I got up around 7 AM.

Program: I didn’t remember to pray this morning. But I had a good afternoon meditation session. I didn’t call my sponsor – mostly because when I thought of it, I couldn’t think of a single thing to tell her.

Work: Bad day. I got nothing done, again.

Mood: Bored/anxious at work – thanks procrastination. Fatalistic over our national politics.

Exercise: I had thoughts of going to Phoenix for CrossFit, but my right knee is hurting. I opted for a quiet night at home.

Food: normal breakfast (coffee w/cream, keto casserole, cheesy biscuit). Then some of my WINNING chili over Fritos with cheddar, some fresh fruit, some mac’n’cheese, a cup of sweet iced tea, some carrots & pea pods, & corn bread with habanero jelly. Cheese & crackers & blackberry kombucha for a late dinner.

Grats: Struggling with this tonight. 1. I’m feeling economically secure this month, for the first time since I lost my job with ER last December. 2. B* is going to arrive in Denver tomorrow, to stay! 3. I have plans to see K* & M* on Sunday. There you go.

music link

I was in Robby's truck. He was driving me & two of our crew to Ouray from Silverton via the Red Mountain Pass. It is some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen. We were all talking & joking, & - despite the rocky start Gold King Season 2018 has had due to the 416 Fire - everyone was in excellent spirits & seemed excited for the upcoming work.

And my heart felt light enough to float up into the sky. I am doing the job I was meant to do. I am in the company of people that I truly care about - even the ones I just met this week. I am living in one of the most gorgeous corners of God's good creation. I am using so many skills I have developed over my entire lifetime, all in the service of protecting the environment.

All is well, all is well, all manner of things shall be well. Amen.

For two days this week, work actually pulled me from my Fortress of Solitude (home office) and sent me into downtown Denver, to a client’s office. I went through the acquisition files of a petroleum company and pulled all environmental records – why, I know not. Obviously, it was a pretty boring task, but it was sorta fun going into downtown on mass transit, seeing other people, & generally having a NYC flashback. The major drawback was having to dress like an adult (curse you, women’s dress shoes!).

Going through the files was drudgery, but I noticed some interesting things along the way:

• This petroleum company, which I will not name, is not a famous company. Yet they are operating hundreds (thousands?) of wells in dozens of states. They make acquisition decisions ($5 million purchase here, $18 million purchase there) with lightning speed – based on the correspondence, it’s often less than three months from the announcement of a sale to the cutting of the check.
• ALL their environmental due diligence has to happen within that short window. It looks like they are soliciting bids from environmental contractors on Monday, picking someone on Tuesday, sending them to the field on Wednesday, & expecting the report two weeks later. Sometimes for fields with 50-100 wells. It can’t be more than that most cursory of field inspections & briefest of records reviews. The acquisitions folks in this game must have serious cojones.
• The names of the fields are remarkably poetic &/or funny. I’ve seen Lonesome, Gooseneck Eld, Southern Comfort, Esperanza, Busy Bee, Zenith Bell, Tensleep, Whiskey Joe, Bayou Galore (perhaps my favorite, as it’s a mishmash of French & Gaelic borrow words), Mamie’s Meadow, Gold-Come-Free, & many other surprisingly whimsical names. There are more prosaic names as well, of course: fields are frequently named after landowners, nearby towns or waterways. I would’ve expected some alphanumeric grid naming system from petroleum engineers. I wonder how the fields get named?
• I am surprised at how many little bits of familiarity I keep tripping over in the files. Company names like Geraghty & Miller (an American precursor to the Empire of the Evil Orange Salamander), Woodward-Clyde (a legacy firm that’s now part of AECOM, like all firms eventually shall be), & Williams Energy Services (Spider-Dad used to work for Wil-Tel, a telecom spinoff of this natural gas company). I saw names of geological formations in Texas where I’ve drilled wells, & references to different pieces of equipment that I’ve fussed with. TCEQ forms I’ve filled out. TDWR permits I’ve had to file.



• There’s a brief period (~1998-1999) where the due diligence punch list included “Y2K Readiness”. Remember how worried everyone was about that, & how little actually went wrong? It seems the oil & gas industry took Y2K very seriously indeed.
• Some of these files go back as far as the mid-80s, which is not really all that long ago. Even so, they feel ancient. Letters are addressed non-specifically to “Gentlemen:” – ‘cause there ain’t no ladies in the oil bidness! The files include VHS tapes of site inspection visits (how would you even play one of those today?). Some of the old well logs are hand-colored with colored pencils, & some of the data printouts are from dot-matrix printers, with the perforated, holed strips along the sides where the paper roll attached to the printer’s wheels. There’s a lot of the old thermal facsimile paper in these files as well, still smelling slightly burned & smearing at the slightest touch.
• I’ve decided that Post-It notes are the modern world’s version of marginalia. The main author of many of the memos & correspondence in these files was a … pithy man, to put it mildly. Obviously not wanting to put his thoughts directly on file documents, instead he peppered them liberally with Post-It notes, pointing out portions of letters as “Total Bull-SHIT” or “stupid”. One had a surprisingly deft doodle showing an alligator’s head – drawn during a boring conference call, perhaps?

What did everyone else do at work this week?

I did an apheresis donation today. For the first time EVER (& I've been a blood donor for decades), I felt shaky & sick afterwards. I laid down with my feet elevated for about ten minutes & then went on my merry way. My blood pressure was a little low when I went in (112/62) but that's within my normal range. So I'm not sure what was different.

Friday I finished up my first field work trip of 2015 - two weeks on Arapahoe. It went fine - even less eventful than usual. We didn't even see any rattlesnakes. Shadeaux came with me again, since hotpantsgalore is still in New Orleans on a month-long work contract at Touro Hospital. I like having the little furball with me in Sterling - she's happy going to doggy day care all day, & she makes the hotel feel more homey in the evenings.

I was very happy to be back in Denver over the weekend. On Friday night, I met up with Bobo Bro & checked out his new condo. Saturday morning, I went to swim practice & then went out to brunch with the swim team. Saturday evening, reunited with Bobo Bro & went to the Rockies-Giants game at Coors Field. Sunday was a cold, rainy mess, so I stayed in all day & did food prep. I made fish tacos with an avocado/lime sauce that were delicious, & I refined a Whole30 version of the Kashi Mayan Harvest bake frozen dinner (removed grain, added shredded chicken). Of course, after a full day in the kitchen, my dishwasher stopped working. Still working on getting the landlord to fix that.

WHOLE30-FIED MAYAN BAKE HARVEST

Ingredients:

• 1 very ripe plantain (yellow and covered with black spots), peeled and cut into 2” pieces
• 1 chicken breast, washed and patted dry
• 1 cup bone broth or water
• 2 sweet potatoes, washed and diced into ½” cubes – enough to make about one layer on a 9"x 13" pan
• 1 bunch of kale, washed, de-stemmed, and chopped (frozen spinach works too)
• ¼ cup pumpkin seeds
• 3 Tbsp. coconut oil (split)
• 1 onion, chopped
• 3-4 cloves garlic
• 1 x 15 oz. can tomato puree (1 ⅞ cups)
• 1 Tbsp. ancho chili powder
• 1 Tbsp. paprika
• 1 tsp. Aleppo pepper
• ½ tsp. sea salt

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400°F.
2. Toss sweet potato cubes in 1 Tbsp. of coconut oil and roast for 15 minutes on a baking tray.
3. Stir the potatoes and add the plantains, then roast for another 15 minutes.
4. Heat 1 Tbsp. of coconut oil in a lidded skillet to medium. Add the chicken breast and cook for about five minutes, until it is golden brown on one side. Add 1 cup of bone broth or water and flip the chicken over. Cover skillet with the lid and let the chicken simmer for 7-10 minutes, checking to make sure it is cooked all the way through. Save the broth or water.
5. Shred the chicken with forks.
6. Add another 1 Tbsp. of coconut oil to the skillet and sauté the onions and garlic until soft and fragrant. Add the kale or spinach and continue sautéing until the greens are wilted.
7. Add the tomato puree, shredded chicken, ancho chili powder, paprika, and salt, and simmer for 10 minutes. Thin sauce with most or all of the saved bone broth or water.
8. When the sweet potatoes and plaintains are roasted and soft, remove them from the oven. Place the potatoes and plaintains in a 9x9” glass dish. Top the potatoes with the sauted onions/greens. Pour the shredded chicken and tomato sauce over everything and top with pumpkin seeds.
9. Return dish to oven and bake for 15-20 minutes.

Serves 4.

Sleep: bad. I read a really upsetting email from my boss right before I started to get ready for bed. I didn't follow my pre-bedtime routine; instead, I watched tons of The Walking Dead with hotpantsgalore & didn't hit the sack until 11:30 PM. Bad sleep, cranky morning, very stressed.

Breakfast: tuna cake, slice of sweet potato quiche, half an avocado, blueberries, black Constant Comment tea.

Lunch: acorn squash & lacinto kale topped with HPG's Texas red chili & avocado chunks, & kombucha. Chili makes everything better. I love my girlfriend for making me Whole30-compliant chili.

Dinner: fridge cleanout. Baby asparagus with lemon & mayo, some olives, another serving of the short ribs/veggies dish.

Snack: apple pie Larabar.

Yesterday I arrived in Albany NY to start a 90-day FEMA deployment, working on claims originating from Hurricane Irene & the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee from late last summer. I haven't gotten my logins yet, so nothing of interest to report yet from work.

Being back in New York has been a trip down Memory Lane. I actually considered going to college in this area, going as far as to accept a recruiting trip from RPI's swim team in 1991, when I was senior in high school. That would've put me right across the river in Troy, NY. Spider-Dad reminded me of that trip in a text message today. It... was not exactly the model of scholar-athlete behavior. Short version: I ended up driving some of the team members home from a frat party after they got too drunk for me to let THEM drive. This was exceedingly bad, because my escort had a stick-shift car & at the time I didn't know how to drive stick. I drove them home, about three miles, in first gear, without stopping for any reason. Awesome.

I was ambushed later today by another memory, this one from 1992. My freshman year at Cornell, I got very sick & missed a week of classes in the spring semester, before Spring Break. In order to catch up, I decided to stay at school for the first half of spring break. Then, my first ever-boyfriend, Maaaaaatt, drove all the way back to Cornell from his parents' house in Queensbury, NY, & took me to his hosue for a four-day break.

Those four days were some of the best of our whole relationship. His parents & siblings were wonderful & their house was beautiful. We went snowshoeing in the Adirondacks. His dad took me for a drive in his Acura NSX. But the highlight of the trip was coming down to Albany to see U2 on the Zoo TV tour. The concert was held at the Albany Egg, & was by far the biggest production I had ever seen. It was an incredible night.

I have a long weekend this weekend - half a day off Saturday, & full days off for Sunday & Monday. I'm debating where to go - NYC or Ithaca? Votes? Other proposed destinations?