It feels sort of anticlimactic, after all of the turmoil and stress it took to write the bid up, but this morning, my next three years’ worth of future was casually approved in a Board of Supervisors meeting.

I sort of knew it would be, as I was the only bidder, and they can’t very well not cover this system. I was feeling fairly superstitious for the last month about assuming that I’d got it. I had plans in my head about how I was going to move on with this next phase of things, but I hadn’t acted on any yet. The most I’ve done is a little window-shopping for a service truck, without any looking in person. I had no contingency plans at all for catching myself if they turned me down.

But it’s all good. I gave myself a little raise, much of which will be eaten up by the new truck. I’m growing out of my pickup, and it will be promoted to my personal vehicle, with maybe a business trip or two in its future. The rest of the raise is going to be squirrelled away into the house fund. I’ve been working on year-to-year contracts for more than ten years now, and that’s not a very stable platform from which to jump into a mortgage. Three years confirmed, now, that’s a little better. Unfortunately, lenders are a little conservative about handing large chunks of money to the self-employed, and want to see two years’ worth of receipts (last I heard) before they’ll take that chance. Which is fine; I can wait and save up a down payment in the next year and a half. And I probably won’t be applying alone then either.

I suppose now that they’re paying me all of this money to run the water system, that I should go get back to work. I’d like to stay employed, after all.

I am really enjoying this new job. I love having fourteen different things to do, all of fairly high priorities. I’ve always worked well under pressure, and now that my body’s adjusting to the stress, I’m rolling with it well.

Some things aren’t all that different from my old job. I still stand around and look at holes in the ground. But a key difference is that I’m in charge now, not just observing. I’m the one shutting the water off so we can cut open a line, I’m the one handing out the notices to the tenants so they don’t get a surprise when they try to flush, and I’m the one who can say, “Enough. We’ll finish this part after the weekend.”

The beautiful part is that I’m still not the one paying for the work. The County’s doing that; I’m just in charge. If I need something done that will cost money, I put a quick proposal together and hand it to my boss, who goes and arranges for the funding. I get to get down to business and just get the work done. It’s fabulous.

Even as I knock things off of my to-do list, more pop on. And I’ll take those as I get them, and be happy for it. I have to plan ahead and prioritize things, so I have work to do for the next six months and the projects get done kind of evenly. I can’t spread myself too thin, but I’m sure I can get it all done.

The first big project that I was working on was sort of an isolated thing. I went around and did my job without interacting a whole lot with the other guys. But now I’m branching out a little more, and working with other people, and I like it.  I went into a building scheduled for demo with a couple of them last week, and salvaged out some good plumbing fittings, and remembered how nice it was to work with good people.

Tom’s got a lot to teach me, and I’ll be spending quite a bit of time with him over the next few months, cramming as much as possible into my brain before he retires. I’m not stupid, and this is the sort of thing that I pick up easily, but there’s so much of it that it’s going to swamp me for a while, but I’ll get it. I don’t expect to learn all of the secrets of the place right off the bat, but in ten years or so, I might have most of them down.

My job satisfaction is at an all-time high, and it’s not jsut because of the money. Oh, don’t get me wrong; the money’s extremely nice, but it’s everything else. It’s getting out there and turning wrenches, it’s shlepping around in a tool belt and hat, it’s getting this place knocked into shape that does it for me. I don’t remember ever loving a job so much. The heat wave isn’t even getting me down.

Now, if only I can continue in this vein for the next ten years, I’ll be golden.

My first full week at the job, and for some reason I was more nervous than for the first few days. I spent those getting myself together administratively, putting together a list of what I need to get done and writing up a giant spreadsheet of existing data.

But today was the day that I had to get out there in the field and start filling in the unknowns on my table. The site’s been sitting unattended for ten years, so I have to go evaluate each building, each service connection, and each backflow preventer. It’s going to take me a good couple of months to get it all sorted out. In the interest of saving some time and really getting to know what I’ve got, I decided to test each backflow preventer right on the spot, rather than just noting them and going back to see if they work. That’s not really the way it’s done, but since I wear both the survey hat and the repairman hat, it made sense.

So I started with an easy one. I picked an empty building with a few irrigation services but no major industrial stuff and I went out and did my thing. The survey part is pretty easy, although I have to train myself to look for different things. Last time I went through these buildings, I was after environmental issues, and now it’s just water. I never had to trace pipes to a boiler or a cooler on the roof before, but it’s not rocket science and I can do it.

Once I got out to the testing part, that’s where it got interesting. Most of the units are not even legal any more, but if they pass a test, I can bump them a little lower on the priority list - we only get so much funding, and this rehab is going to take a few years. I’m finding that it was an Air Force policy to paint the shit out of these things though, and apparently nobody told the flunky doing the painting to not paint the threads - they’re there for a reason. And I’m sure not going to ruin the threads of my very expensive gauge trying to cram it onto an illegal installation anyway. So those are quick - a big fat FAIL and I’m done.

On my way out to one that’s made me roll my eyes for years, I was crossing a well-watered lawn. Since it was getting soggy, I took a step onto a valve box cover, thinking it would be a nice dry place to set my gauge. Not so! The box was actually so full of water that the lid was floating, and as soon as I stepped onto it, it shot out from under my foot like I’d stepped on one of the kids’ skateboard. My leg went down (and it was the bad one too) and the next thing I knew, I was standing about two feet shorter than I usually do, and my boot was taking on water. Well, shit. At least I didn’t break the valves or my leg.

I squished back to my truck after I failed that unit, dumped out my boot, and went on back in to the office to dry out a little. This office may not know what’s hit them - it might have been a better idea for me to office with the working guys, but that’s where the files I need are.

Once I recovered enough dignity, I went on to another building. This one had a bunch of units in assorted boiler rooms, and of course, they were all very spidery and about eight feet off the ground. Fine. I borrowed a ladder, strapped on my shiny new tool belt (which works wonderfully - why didn’t I think of this before?) and reached in past one to turn it on at the valve. And of course, that one had a major leak, which is why the valve was off in the first place, and equally of course, I was standing right underneath the leak. The first I knew of it was as it shot down my back, into my new toolbelt, and giving my pants a double dose of stinky water.

I hopped off the ladder, thought about it, and hopped back on to turn the valve off. I wasn’t going to get any wetter after all.

So, wet legs, squishy boot, wet shirt and tools. Dirty hands from ten years of dust and cobwebs, now wet. Sweaty head. Spiders. Barked knuckle.

And you know what? I really like this job.

There, I’ve got that first week under my belt, even if it was a short one. I was right too; it is going to take me a bit to get back into the swing of being busy all day. I’ve done it before and I can do it again, but I’m fairly well wiped out tonight after three days of sitting in the office. But it was a busy sitting, for once.

I do see that I’m going to have to pace myself. My instinct is to dive in with as many feet as possible and get off to a good start, but that might raise the bar too high for later on. Once I get this site completely ironed out, a process I expect to take about six months, my day-to-day duties are going to be fairly light. And I don’t want them to compare that with a ball of fire earlier and decide that maybe I’m not worth my nice shiny pay rate after all.

But it’ll even out. I have enough to keep me fully occupied for a while, and once I start getting out in the field (next week) my pace will come back to me. I’m quite used to doing field work in the morning and coming in to write things up in the heat of the afternoons.

It is weird to have all of these people around though. My old office has only had the four of us regulars for several years now, and it’s funny to see new faces. I knew some of them before, which gives me a head start on names at least.

And I like my new office. I’ve got it all filled up already, and I can see that I probably won’t have enough bookshelves or room to put them even if I scrounge them. My manager rolled me down a chart table yesterday, that takes up much of the free space when I open it, but I’m going to need it.

I have an enormous shopping list going too. The smaller stuff may get bought this weekend, but I’ll wait to get a ladder and a shop-vac and a truck-mounted valve-actuator until I actually need them. But I have begun the search for the perfect tool belt, as it’s becoming clear that I’m going to have to be dragging my equipment into some awkward places. It’s surprisingly hard to find the right tool belt - they all seem to be made for carpenters, and I’m more of a plumber. Yes, it makes a difference. My tools are mostly longer.

And yes, I might model it for you, if you ask nicely, perhaps with a nice ensemble of steel-toed boots and hard hat?

This is my last day here, and my ten-year anniversary at the site.

I’m so nervous about the whole change that I’m not sleeping well and my stomach is seriously revolting today.

My office is cleaned out and my truck is loaded up. As soon as the idiots who decided that they needed a last-minute site tour (after I’ve turned in my mileage expense report, of course, so they’re not going to get to see anything which requires my truck to get to), I’m going to run my boxes down to my new office and see if I can’t get a key. I like to start work at least an hour earlier than most of the office weenies do, and I can’t always go straight to the field.

I have very mixed emotions about this change. It’s huge and life-altering, but I know it’s a good thing overall. I’ve really enjoyed this job, but the people here have been such assholes lately that I’ve decided not to do that ongoing consulting work that they asked for. I do not need the money, and it’s so good to be able to say that. I just want to walk away from the rampant bureaucracy, although I know damn well that I’ll be walking right into another set. But hey, at least as a contractor, I won’t have to fight for budgets or deal with the Board. I can just do my job and submit my bills peacefully.

But still. Queasy tummy.

So. All has been quiet on the business front, except for boring niggling details here and there, and I decided not to wear y’all out with babbling about it endlessly.

But today was the real decision point. I signed the contract, but the County wouldn’t execute it until the Board of Supervisors formally approved the expense. I went and sat in on the meeting this morning so that I could know my fate as soon as possible.

It was approved with twenty other list items in about five seconds, after sitting through some presentation that went in one ear and out the other. How anticlimatic.

So I rushed back to my office and immediately quit my job. I yanked that net right out from under me, and I’m stepping out on the high wire on August 1st!

I’m all sorts of nervous, yes, but that’ll settle down. The details I have left to manage will calm me some, and then just getting down to doing the work will be fine. I do have to wonder though, what was I thinking, starting a physical, outdoor job in August? Clearly, I’m insane.

But I’m insane and my own boss.

I’ve started to shell out money for this enterprise, and let me tell you what, that’s a scary part!

I’ve commited to buying commercial liability insurance. Personal health and way-high vehicle insurance are on my to-do list for Friday. 

I spent most of yesterday browsing laptops, with the help of a very patient friend. The Dells were shiny and came in red and all, but in the end, I broke my three-computer Dell streak and bought a Toshiba. I even got it that day, as I went with the in-store pickup, so my night was filled with getting a new toy going.

The evening was less filled than it might have been though; adding an additional machine turns out to be much simpler than replacing one. There’s no major transfers to do, just move a few contacts and bookmarks on over, and I’m set. That one’s going to be dedicated to the business, but I can see that I’m going to want to use it otherwise too - the screen’s huge and bright, and it runs like the wind, even with the dreaded Vista on it. It doesn’t fit in my old laptop bag though, so John gets that back for his DVD player, and I have more shopping to do.

But the biggie of yesterday was completely unexpected. My manager called, and I assumed it was about the deliverable I gave him that morning. I’d have liked it to be about that, actually, as I’m not billing for it until he’s happy, in case I have to tack extra hours on to fix something.

But no, he wanted me to come sign my gigantic contract. Which I happily did, and even more happily since they had it right there and I didn’t have to go down to the main offices. Now I’ve officially obligated myself to six months of being my own boss. I just have to wait for the Board of Supervisors to look it over one last time (you can bet that I’m going to that meeting) and for the contracts people to execute it, and then I’ll give my notice at my day job. That’ll probably slip to a little less than two weeks, but I’ll warn my supervisor informally first. He knows I’m looking.

I took a look inside my office-to-be while I was there. It’s not bad; quite a bit smaller than this one, but nicer, and it does have a window. There isn’t as much room for my house plants, so some will have to come home with me, but I think the little fridge will fit just fine. There’s a fancy old desk in there, which happens when you move into the former Headquarters building. I’ll have to get my own internet service, which won’t be a problem, as I’m getting the office space for free. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense for them to charge me a lease when they’re the ones paying me.

So last night, it all sort of hit me, and I got the sick-feeling butterflies.

What have I done? Am I going to be able to do a good enough job at this?

I find it significant that my last day working for the Air Force is ten years to the day of my first one. I hope the next job runs as long and gives me as much growth.

It’s terrifying and exhilarating all at the same time. I’m nervous as hell, but I’m choosing to ignore that and just do the job anyway. And so it begins.

Did I mention a few weeks back, in the continuing saga of the County: Will They Hire Me or Won’t They, that the manager mentioned that the Board of Supervisors were getting itchy feet about creating a new position? Well, they did, and I broke out in a cold sweat, but the manager and his boss came up with a workaround.

They wanted me to bid on running the system full-time as a contractor. And they wanted me to be available 24/7/365, so it wasn’t going to be a small bid either. I think their goal was to show the Board just how much more it would cost to contract the work out than it would to hire.

I wrote up my bid on half a day’s notice, calculated costs for things like my benefits, extra taxes, and hiring someone to cover for me on my time off, and handed it in, expecting them to swallow their dentures. I made it healthy enough that I really wouldn’t have minded going to work for them at that rate at all, in case they did go for it, but that wasn’t the main goal of the bid.

Well.

The manager called me today as I was leaving work, and sounded very hesitant. Since I just gave him some documents that we’re working on together to review on another contract, my first thoughts were, “Oh crap, what’s he found wrong with them?”

But no. It seems that the Board has decided that they cannot hire someone right now. My heart sank. There went my job opportunities, and now I was going to have to scramble to keep food on the table when the day job runs out.

He went on. Instead, what they want to do is contract me to run the system, full time, same conditions as I bid on, only for a six-month trial period instead of a year. As a temporary contract, it doesn’t have to go out to bid, and they have six months to decide what they want to do for the long term. At the end of the term, they would either hire or put the whole thing out for bid. And did I still want to bid on it, and was half of that original (year-long) bid amount good, or did I want to recalculate numbers?

I didn’t even have to think about it. No, that bid is perfectly good. Yes, I will do that if they offer me the contract. They want it when? A decision by Friday? As in, two days from now? Holy cow.

Yes. My decision is yes. Took me all of four minutes.

So, if all goes well and the negotiations (I’m sure there will be some) come down in my favor, by July 17, you could be looking at a completely self-employed woman. I’ll either quit my day job or talk that down to minor part time, and go to work for myself full time.

It’s terrifying and completely exhilarating at the same time. This little business has never been more than pocket money to me, although it’s paid for my truck. We as women live in a world where we almost always have someone to fall back on; a father, a husband, an employer; something. To walk away from the last piece of security I had and stand absolutely on my own feet makes me feel so good.

And so afraid! There’s no one to take up the slack if I get sick or hurt, and it’s worse than the year-to-year contract I have now, as I’m going to have to re-compete for it myself each year. There will be a metric ass-load of stress, but I think it will all be worth it.

After all, my day job was going to run out in six months anyway, so what’s the harm in taking a better job for that time? If, at the end of it, they don’t like me or I hate being my own boss, then I’m no worse off than I am now. I’ll just have to start looking for another job, just like I would if this weren’t on the table. But ideally, I’ll have a bit of a cushion to fall back on, one that I made myself. And I’m really proud of that. Scared, but proud. I’m afraid, but I’m going to get up there and do it anyway, and deal with the details as they come. And I’m going to kick ass at it.

Things aren’t all doom; all the time, around here, contrary to my wallowing in it this morning.

I may have mentioned that my day job, she is running out. I’m frantically busy with some of the death throes right now, and really kicking ass at that, but at the end of the year, I’m out on the street. Possibly sooner, if they look up in July and notice that I’m out of work, a scenario which doesn’t amuse me.

Sure, I could stay with my company; they’d love to keep me, and I’d be OK with that. I’m finally vested, and get all sorts of really good benefits. But to stay means to move, and I’m not leaving the kids. I don’t have the resources to fight for them, if I wanted to bring them with me, and that’s sort of a horrible choice to present to a kid anyway. “Which parent do you want to live with? C’mon, pick, I don’t have all day here!”

Yeah, no. I’ll stay here, even if it means a drastic cut in pay.

Which it will. I tried to get on with the County in an environmental job in the fall, and was passed over. Theoretically, I could go to one of the neighboring counties or another position could open up here, but I’m not terribly enthusiastic about that.

I’m not sitting back waiting for the axe though. What I’ve been doing is using my business to get a foot in the door with the County department that’s actually four buildings down from me here. When Big Jeff went to Iraq, I suddenly became the only water operator for nine months, and they liked my work.

They liked my work enough that the guys on the ground here are finally listening to what Jeff and I have been saying for years; that in order to be in compliance with State laws, they need to have a full-time operator, not only part-time contract operators.

They’re working on making a permanent position, although that’s a fight, especially in the middle of the budget year. And they want me for the job. Jeff would do too, but they want to wrap the leftover on-site environmental stuff into the operator’s job, and I’m really the best man for that. That’s my job now, after all. Besides, Jeff’s getting out of the water business.

So today, I made a step forward on that. They’d asked me to contract with them for a certain number of hours to help write a document. Today, I signed a contract for that, making myself an official consultant in both of my jobs, although I’m much more proud of the one that has my name on the letterhead.

It’s a perfect situation too; I don’t actually have to produce the document, just assist the manager in producing it. I’ll get my 50 hours without having the stress of signing my name to it in front of the State. (Not that I won’t have stress enough; it’s due June 30.) And it’s not just this one product; I know damn well that it’s an audition for the real job, the one we’d all like me to have. And getting to keep my hand in writing the operations plan from which I’d have to work is sort of a gift.

The two hitches in my carefully laid out plans (do they ever go right?) are one: the pay rate stinks. Like, a 20% paycut from my day job’s rate, not to mention the loss of the business income from the County work that I already do, and two: one of the County Supervisors got cold feet about making the position.

The money thing is surmountable. It’ll be tight rations for a couple of years, but this job has the potential to move back up in the ranks; I’ve hit the top for this location in my current job. I’ll get back up to an acceptable rate sooner or later.

But the cold-feet thing, now that could be a problem. Last week, the manager came to me and told me what was going on, and asked me to write a bid on doing the whole thing as a contractor. And please to have it by the end of the day, which sent me into a little bit of a panic. After all, my business has only ever been a part-time one, and it’s a whole different ball game when you’re entirely supporting yourself independently. You have to think about things like self-employment taxes, and hiring backup, and health insurance and all of that. So I took a fairly standard equation of doubling one’s billing rate to cover all of that overhead, checked the numbers to see if I could do it and wasn’t fooling myself, and sent him up my bid. They wanted it to show the Supervisor how much more it would be to contract someone, but I tried to keep it realistic. After I looked at the numbers, I sort of hope they take it, even if it does put a metric ass-load of stress on me. The money would be good!

So, step one; sign small contract: done.

Step two coming up! (I hope.)

Since I suspect that this will be my last time this up close and personal with the process of installing a well, I’ve been taking lots of photos. And what the hell; I’ll share them with you all, because I love drilling so and therefore you must too.

Drilling’s in a roundabout way what got me interested in photography. When I first got my job, one of the biggest projects going on involved puncturing the base with lots and lots of holes, and my job was to observe and document it. It was shortly thereafter that I discovered my life-long appreciation for working mens’ asses, but that is another post.

This particular well is going in to one of three houses that were put on base water when their water supplies were found to be contaminated, about fifteen years ago. We’ve cleaned up the contamination, and transferred the base to the new owners, who don’t want to be water suppliers and requested that we put these houses back to wells. The wells are going hundreds of feet below the original contamination zones, which was clean water all along. This is the last of the three; it was held up for reasons beyond our control.

Nobody lives here anyway.

Which is fortunate, as drilling is loud, and it’s messy, and it takes up a lot of space. This is why people usually put the wells in before the houses are built. This is not all of the equipment yet.

I’m definitely not supposed to play favorites, but I’ve worked with this company for a long time; they’ve taught me a lot, and I have a ton of confidence in their competence. A lot of really good people work for them.

Setting up the 20-inch conductor casing that keeps the top of the hole from wallowing out and making a giant mess. This will be pulled out when the well is finished.

To set the 20-foot long conductor casing, they use a technique called Air-Rotary Casing Hammer. The casing is hammered straight down into the ground with a hydraulic hammer, with a smaller drill bit rotating and advancing inside it to make room. Compressed air is blown down in through the central drill string, and comes up out between it and the conductor casing, bringing the drill cuttings up with it. The cuttings, or the soil that’s removed by the drilling, blow through that eight-inch hose and through the cyclone, which slow them down enough to make the soil drop into the hopper for removal.

The shoe at the top of the conductor casing bounces a little with the rebound of the hammer, which is the squarish assembly, and cuttings are blown out a little now and then. See the driller ducking? It’s messy. It’s even messier if they use this technology to install an entire well, pounding it down below the top of the water table. Then what’s blown out isn’t dirt; it’s mud.

It’s a dirty job.

The conductor casing’s almost in. It needs to be down to a foot or so above the ground, so the drilling mud they use later for the main event can flow out and over it, and back into a tub for collection.

The shaker table is finally here, and as clean as we’ll see it until they finish.

They’re using mud-rotary drilling here, which uses a heavy bit on a long hollow drill stem. Drilling mud, which is composed of water and a specific amount of bentonite clay, depending on the soil conditions, is pumped at pressure down through the center of the the drill string, where it shoots out through holes in the drill bit. The mud cools and lubricates the rotating bit while also providing a thick enough medium to carry the bits of soil that are removed, or the cuttings, back up to the ground surface between the wall of the boring and the outside of the drill string.

The mud is collected in a tub right at the top of the well, and pumped up to this shaker table, where the cuttings are removed and shaken down to a hopper. The mud falls through a series of screens and is pumped back to the rig for reuse.

The driller and his helpers are adding a piece of drill rod, or “tripping in.”  I’ll ask them next week how much one of those things weighs. Sorry, I missed a photo of the bit; they zipped that thing into the ground while I was back in the office. I’ll get a picture when they take it back out.

They use the winches and pulleys on the mast to do the heavy lifting; Jose’s guiding the bottom end of the drill rod in so it doesn’t drag or hit someone.

Jose is handing off the dangerous end of the drill rod to Matt the driller, who will guide it over the end of the previous section.

Matt and Victor are tightening the connection between the new piece of drill rod and the one they were already using. The tub on the ground is the mud collection tub.

I love to watch the cuttings pile up in the hopper, especially if they’re drilling through a sand formation like this. It’s not so fascinating when it’s gravel and pieces are flying everywhere. And it’s a little tricky to get a picture of it before Jose or Victor knock it down with their shovels to keep the hopper filling evenly.

Victor’s a little bit of a ham. I love a man who will pose for me. He’s working on making sure the shaker’s running right, as it’s a particular piece of equipment, and also mixing more mud in it. They have to keep making more, as some is lost downhole, especially if they’re drilling through a gravel zone, and some just doesn’t get separated from the cuttings and ends up in the bin.

James the geologist inspecting the cuttings to see what kind of soil they’re drilling through at the moment. We’re not down to the level we want yet, but we have to look for a water-producing type of soil when we get near there. Gravels and sands are porous and let the groundwater flow through them freely; clay, not so much.

The spouts on the shaker, separating the mud from the cuttings. I can easily find myself a little hypnotized by the patterns in the drilling mud, which has the consistency and almost the color of a chocolate milkshake. Doesn’t taste too much like one though.

And that, my dear friends, concludes this week’s thrilling episode of Holes in the Ground: Why We Like Them. Tune in next week for the shocking conclusion. Will we drop a three-ton drill string three hundred feet below ground? Will we find water where we expect it? How long will it take to ream out a borehole? And what if we strike oil?

All of these burning questions answered and more!