What's up?

We got another dog.  His name is Daniel.  We think he's a Chiweenie.  Anna loves him!  They are best buds and they play-fight a lot of the time.  Anna is alpha dog, and she gets a bit upset when Daniel tries to nab her beef bone.  They share food just fine, but pets not so much: Anna is very jealous of attention we give to Daniel.

One drawback of Daniel is that he pees and poops in the house.  He will only "go" on carpet or rug.  So we keep the bedroom doors closed all the time.  Still sometimes he leaves a little surprise.

I recently drove out and visited a couple of "my" drilling rigs.  At the time I had four wells drilling, but I only had daylight to visit two rigs.  At each rig there is a mudlogger team working.  Mudloggers are geologists who work at the wellsite and look at rock samples that come to the surface in drilling mud.  They also measure gas and look for oil in samples or in the mud.  This information can be very useful...  The rig above was on the TX-NM state line.  This is in one of the least populated areas of the United States.

The second rig was in a slightly more scenic spot, next to a little hill.  At this well we were collected whole core.  I surprised the mudlogger by showing up unannounced. 

A few weeks ago we had some 80-degree weather.  It seems like out here in West Texas the weather goes from Winter-like to Summer-like pretty quick.  We had frosty mornings with chilly 40 degree days and then suddenly a string of 80+ F days.  Now (early April) it seems we are pretty firmly in a summer pattern, upper 80s to 90s for highs.  Anyway, I live on the west edge of town.  There is a big field to the west of us, full of mesquite scrub and probably 100s of other plants I can't identify.  Recently they came in with a big machine and "cleared" a huge area of the mesquite.  Really only anything sticking up more than four or five inches was cut away.  What results is that you can see a bunch more of the stuff near the ground, like the flower above.

This scat was mostly hair.  Bobcat or fox scat?

One day I mowed the lawn.  Midland has now restricted watering to once per week, so it's unlikely the lawn will survive much into the real summer.  Unless we get some significant and well-spaced-out rainfall.  Trying to keep the trees alive, though.

I found out recently there is a mountain bike park in Odessa.  

 I brought the dogs to the dog park on a Monday.  I had the day off.  There were no other dogs, but Anna and Daniel had plenty of fun in the big mud puddle.  Afterward we went for a 30-min "dry off" walk in the nearby desert park behind Sibley Nature Center.

I got to fly again on the company King Air, on a short hop to Artesia, NM.

Tonight a big line of strong Thunderstorms developed in a line south of Midland, from Odessa to Abilene.  Not much rain fell north of I-20, but the storm moved slowly off to the south and looks like it dropped some precipitation onto reservoirs near San Angelo... which we in Midland rely on for about half of our water supply.

Recent newspaper article says Midland, TX has the fastest-selling homes in the country (lowest days on market).  Things continue to boom here, with more traffic every week.  More restaurants and services are opening, but they don't seem to be keeping pace with the population growth.  Debi saw an article reporting that 1,000 people per week are moving to the Midland-Odessa area.  Could it have been per month?  1,000 per week is 52,000 people per year to an area with <250,000 people.  Either way, that's pretty hardy growth.