Wyoming!!!
So, I have been living in Casper Wyoming for the past week at a company apartment. Basically this past week has consisted of Halliburton's New-Hire school, which is something every employee goes through, no matter what department they're joining. It's been a lot of rules, regs, and "Thou Shalt Nots" which all are basically solely to cover their corporate ass. Luckily, the department I'm in is one of the more independent. We actually have somewhat of a reputation as not playing by the rules. More on that in a later post. Also this week, I filled out a bunch of forms for my company credit and gas cards, my company issue coveralls, health insurance, direct deposit, taxes, and other stuff. At the beginning of the week I was issued a company truck, a cab-and-a-half Chevy Silverado, which has come in handy since we got hit with about 9 inches of snow on Thursday. Along with the snow, it got cold out here. Yesterday's high, before windchill, was only 3 degrees Fahrenheit at about 1:00 pm. We haven't broken freezing since Wednesday night, and the past two nights it's been around 10 degrees below zero. And if you think that's harsh, you haven't factored in the wind yet. Casper's average windspeed at any time over the course of the year is 12.1 mph. The wind hasn't been as bad as Wednesday morning, when gusts over 70 miles an hour were recorded locally, but it hasn't gone away, by any means. The combination of the wind and the light, dry snow leads to some pretty cool scenes, actually. For example, when driving down the freeway on Thursday, I noticed extremely thin lines of snow blowing perpendicular to the roadway, just over the surface. It looked almost like an extremely shallow stream, flowing over the freeway, or like the smoke used to mark streamlines in a wind tunnel. Anyhow, the weather is kinda harsh, but I really love it out here. I'll post again when I have the time.