"Geokinetics Processing & Interpretation provided free flu shots to anyone who would go down to the 20th floor. I didn't make it. I was too busy with something or another, and just didn't make it. Andrea said she did not want to get a flu shot, and maybe I followed her example. However, the afternoon after the shots, I started to ache and sneeze and I felt terrible. Thursday I ended up taking my first sick day since going to work at GDC. There were other firsts this week, and maybe I should stress them, rather than the fact I took a day off work. However, maybe it is good to remind each of you who read this, and particularly myself, the value of having a real job (0037.html), where one can get paid for taking a day off work because of the flu. Anyway, as I implied above, this was not the only thing that happened this week, but it seemed like much of what did happen orbited around my first sick day since going to work for GDC.
The only other thing of significance at work this week was a presentation I put together for Dave Johnson to take to Mexico. However, it was not what he wanted, and so it will probably never see the light of day. It really got me thinking though.
The spread-sheet chart to the right summarizes what got me thinking. In the monthly publication "Offshore" there was an article that quoted some Pemex engineers as saying there could be gigantic drops in the production of the largest Pemex field over the next two years. Cantarell is offshore Cuidad del Carmen, where Andrea and I went in March (0612.html). It is fractured limestone, probably fractured by a meteorite. It became the largest producing field when the Golden Triangle by Poza Rica started to drop off it's production. Anyway, I went out and found a chart showing total Mexican production, and put these two production history / forecast models in the same spreadsheet. The first thing I noticed is how the production of the entire country mirrors the production of this one field. The second thing was that peak oil at the field, and possibly for the country occurred in October of 2004. The next obvious thing was that the significant drop in production which follows the Pemex engineer's predictions will have a significant impact on the economy of Mexico.
The bright side of the news is that the giant Tertiary trend that Chevron, Devon, and Norsk Hydro announced with their Jack Field production test a few weeks ago continues into Mexico. However, the discovery wells have already been drilled on the U.S. side of the ultra deep water, and it will still be at least 3-5 years before there will be on-stream production. So taking this into account, and assuming that Pemex's deep water production can meet or exceed the production from Cantarell, I added this as the blue graph on the chart to the right. This makes it look like Mexico has not reached peak production yet, which is probably the case. However, if Cantarell drops off as quick as predicted by this model, the yellow circle shows that Pemex and the country of Mexico will go bankrupt between 2008 and 2015. The implications of this chart on immigration, on the U.S. economy, and on you kids and my Grandkids is really scary to me. Oh well! I think it is significant, and I think if you are aware it is a probability, you can take steps to prepare so the effect on you and your families is minimal.
On Tuesday there was a free flu shot for anyone who wanted to get one. As mentioned above, Andrea said she did not want to get a flu shot, and I was busy working on the presentation and forgot to go when it was time, so I didn't get one either. However, right after the flu shots, it seemed like several folks in the office got sick. Carlos came dragging into my office, telling me how his baby had been up most of the night throwing up and how terrible he felt. One of the guys I car pool with, Mike Schoemann, got sick, stayed home one day, and came into work late the next day. Andrea had lost her voice, probably from some kind of flu over the weekend, and was still sounding funny. Wednesday afternoon I started to feel really bad. The computers went down, and George had nothing to work on, so when I told him I was feeling pretty poor, he said let's go, and we went home early. I got home about 4:00, went to bed, and didn't really get up until about noon the next day. As I mentioned above, it was my first missing work sick day since I went to work at GDC over 3 years ago. Oh well! There were some e-mails from Mike Dunn, and when I responded to them he told me it would be good for me to come into work on Friday, if at all possible.
So I did, even though I was not feeling all that good in the morning. As the day went on, it went better and better, and I was feeling pretty good by the time we left to go home at 4:00 PM Friday. Mike Dunn came into the office and talked to me for about an hour in the morning. He prepped me for what Lee Bell said to me later in the day. The bottom line is that Dave Johnson is telling them they need to cut costs, and is encouraging firing of several folks on the staff. I find this absurd, especially since John Gillooly is out there attempting to hire several new people. It makes absolutely no sense to me at all. So I asked if they are looking to fire me. Mike said no, and then he said that I was not being used very effectively right now, which is an understatement. Anyway, Lee wants me to become involved in his pet project, which is to build a new velocity model building program jointly with dGB, the Dutch seismic interpretation free-ware company. In order to help with what is needed, I need to understand how to do pre-stack depth migration. This means I need to be able to take CDP gathers, which you can each read about in my book and if you don't have a copy of my book yet ask me because I have a copy for you, and convert this data from seismic travel-time to depth, then migrate it to get a more realistic picture of subsurface geology. The entire process is interpretative, and Lee thinks it is right up my ally. I do enjoy interpretation, and I did not enjoy processing when I processed a seismic line as part of my training at Mobil back in the fall of 1974. So I am now full time in the Depth Group. Mike Schoemann is the leader of this group. George Schultz and Dave Wiebel are in the group. I will be reworking a big project which was done for Noble Oil last year, was done wrong, and has just had the time processing refinished in order to better bring out the base of salt reflector. Isn't it interesting how fast your life can turn around and everything you think you are working on gets changed? I expect each of you will have this happen to you multiple times in your lives.
So George and I got back to the Park and Ride parking lot a little before 5:00. I went to the grocery store and bought a new daily case for my vitamin pills, and some roses for Andrea. Shortly after getting home, we went to Cinemark and watched the movie "Catch a Fire." It is a glorification of one of the fighters in the CNF, the group ending apartheid in South Africa. The movie was well shot. The morals of the principle person in the story turned me off. In fact, the whole movie and the white as well as the black characters were a very, very sad statement about what our society has become. It is certainly the same in Houston, Texas as it is in Cape Town, South Africa. We got home from the movie and from going to the grocery store in time for "Numb3rs," which I watched and which Andrea slept through.
Saturday turned out to be a very nice day. On Friday Les Denham asked if Andrea and I would like to go sailing, Andrea said yes, and so we went sailing with Les on Saturday. I slept in, because I was still recovering from my sick day, while Andrea went for a run and did her exercises. We got to Les' house about 9:40 AM. He had the boat all hooked up. Lisa is a Real Estate closer, and she had to work. So we rode with Les to Clear Lake. We arrived about 11:00, and had the boat put together, ate lunch, and were in the water by noon. A few times the wind died down. Once we got the rudder stuck in the mud. Other than these events, the sailing was nice. Boring, but nice. We did not leave Clear Lake. However, we went to each side. The biggest waves were from the big yachts going in and out of Galveston Bay. I got sun burned, which I've always found good for getting rid of a cold. Andrea had never done anything like this and was fascinated with the whole process. I enjoy Les and his stories. So it was a very nice day. We took Lisa and Les to dinner at Cracker Barrel (their choice) for dinner. It was a nice meal, and we had a good time talking about a variety of different things. I learned that the first time I met Les was when he was representing Seiscom Delta at the Seismic Acoustic Laboratory semi-annual meetings for Seiscom Delta with Ray Farrell. I also learned that the first time I met Lisa was in New Orleans at an SEG, when I drove John Denham over to New Orleans and got a ticket for going 80 miles per hour when the speed limit was 55 miles per hour. Lisa said she was really impressed with this, and figured I was a fun person based on how I described the whole experience. Oh well!
Sunday was very busy. My Primary lesson was on honoring the Sabbath Day. I couldn't help but think about my Dad, and how he often worked on Sundays. It was his turn to take the water, or the hay needed to be cut or windrowed or baled, or something needed to be fixed. It was hard for me when the church leaders would talk about how important it is to honor the Sabbath. I particularly remember a talk where one of the Apostles talked about wanting to give a Toyota yell as he finished driving through Cache Valley on a Sunday after not seeing one tractor out working on a farm. I admit being very judgmental when this same General Authority participated in a Regional Conference in Houston and later the same day participated in a satellite broadcast from Salt Lake, which obviously required him to take public transportation on the Sabbath. I'm sure my judgment came from the fact I have always attempted to arrange my flights so they did not occur on the sabbath. Then I think of how it pains me when I call loved ones on Sunday and they tell me they are at the mall or going to a movie. Being of the Viet Nam domino theory generation, I see this bragging about not following my teachings as the first step leading to smoking, or drinking, or pornography, or worse. I didn't tell my Primary kids any of this. I always very carefully follow the lesson manual, except at baptismal talks when their parents are in attendance.
Sacrament Meeting was good. The choir sang 'Rejoice, the Lord is King.' It was fun to practice, and the performance went better than the practice. Andrea still had a horse voice, and so she provided an objective observor. The speakers were Ty Perich, as well as Julia and Mark Bancroft. Julia's talk pulled at my heart strings. Marc's talk was funny. Both messages were on track and good. I wrote the following possible stanza for Prime Words from Julia's quote of Bruce R. McConkie:
We left sacrament meeting, and came home for a quick dinner. Then Andrea went with me to Home Teach the Schmidts. While there Anna called home and asked me to write her a letter of recommendation and to e-mail it to her, which I did the following Thursday night. The First Presidency message was about new members and baptism, and so I focused the message on Jonathan's baptism, which is coming up on the 12th of November (0646.html). We left the Schmidt's and got to the church a little bit after the baptismal service for the Wright family children started. I thought Matthew Wright, in my class, was going to be baptized. His family is just starting to come back to church, and the Bishop wanted him to attend Primary a bit more before being baptized. His oldest sister and brother were baptized. It was a very nice service. I particularly liked Deanna Warden's talk on The Holy Ghost. I left the baptism and walked to the Chapel for the annual High Priest priesthood quorum meeting. President Pickerd presided and was the concluding speaker. He handed out a paper with the following quote on, which summarizes the theme of the meeting:
As soon as the priesthood meeting was over, I went back to the Relief Society Room to help Andrea set up her room. She already had it done, and so we headed home so we could meet Tim Gebauer, who was waiting for us, so he could Home Teach us. It was an interesting conversation, and created a basis for further discussion later. Then Paul called, and we started to tie down our plans for Thanksgiving. This also turned into an interesting conversation, also creating the basis for further discussion. When Tim left and after Paul's call we found a message on the phone saying: "You guys are never home. " I chuckled because I'm sure part of the reason I decided to hold off calling everyone every Sunday nights for a while is because 'you guys are never home.' And I have never not picked up the phone because caller ID said it is one of you kids. Of course, I do not care to listen to some sabbath activity descriptions when I call on Sunday evening, which come across to me as "You can't tell me what to do any more!" And my key reason I have not been calling is I recognize I can not force a relationship with any of you. I decided I have to give you space to create or grow a relationship with me, if you choose to do so, and not because I am forcing it with a weekly phone call or sending you a Thoughtlet without your requesting me to do so. Anyway, I think the above 6 paragraphs demonstrate how very busy Sunday was. And it also shows how much one can do, even when recovering from the flu, given they can get some rest during a sick day."