As You Wish

Ok so I'm not really a "miner", but I do work for a mine now. I have been working there for two weeks now and I think it is finally time I talked about it for a minute or two. I got a job with this mine which is about 45 minutes from where I live which might not seem that appealing, but they gave me a company vehicle to drive, so I won't complain too much. Let me take a minute to add that if you have any questions about mining go ahead and ask. I have been around this business my whole life and I take it for granted sometimes that people just know what it's all about. I will warn you though I won't go into too much detail about the mine I am working for because...well...I don't want to get fired.

This is a piece of equipment used to drill holes in the walls of the underground to put explosives in.

The wire mesh and those dark squares are used to hold the ceiling in place.

It's always nice to know which way the exit is.

This sign says "primary escape."

This is called a refuge chamber. If there is ever an emergency underground this is where we are supposed to seek shelter. This thing is tiny and God help the people that would be stuck in this thing with me if we have to use it. Like I said before I am slightly claustrophic and this pop can just isn't big enough.

This is an example of what it looks like underground. There are no lights other than the cap lamp on the forehead of your hard hat, so it's very dark. Imagine a night when the moon is hidden behind the clouds and it's really dark...take that and multiply it by about 100...that's what it's like underground. Completely and utterly pitch black. You can't even see your own hand in front of your face if you turn your cap lamp off. I am going to go ahead and confess now that I am afraid of the dark, so once again God help those around me if my lamp ever goes out.

When I looked straight down this is what I saw. Water. If you dig far enough into the ground you will eventually find water. This is why mines have a dewatering system in place. Unfortunately it doesn't always get all the water and because I am height challenged the water at some points came close to my knees.

A few nights ago Andrew got a sharp pain in his chest when we were getting ready to go to bed and didn’t think much of it. (Don’t worry he didn’t have a heart attack.) All day Tuesday he felt tension in his chest and it wouldn’t go away, so he decided to go on Web MD to see what it had to say. No matter what he typed in or clicked on, it told him he should be seeking immediate medical attention. So what did he do? He waited until I was off work to drive the 10 minutes from my mine site to his to pick him up and take him 45 minutes back to town to the emergency room.

When we got there he went to sign in and told the guy at the desk he had been having sharp pains in his chest and a continual tension. There were 3 or 4 people already waiting to get in, but I didn’t think we would have to wait because well…he’s been having chest pains. The guy told him to have a seat and they would get him back as soon as they could. Two and a half hours later they called him back. Let me repeat that…Two. And. A. Half. Hours. Later. The nurse took his vitals, asked him what the issue was, and sent us back to the waiting room because they didn’t have a room available yet.

If you have a bad memory like me you may have already forgotten what the problem is, so being the nice gal I am I’ll remind you. He has been having CHEST PAIN. While we were waiting my Dad called. This is how the conversation went down:
Dad: “You got a letter from (the place I work), and I wasn’t sure if it was important, so I stopped by your house and the lights are out and no one answered the door.”
Me: “That’s because we aren’t home…we’re at the emergency room”
I then proceeded to explain why and he said: “You’ve been there that long and they haven’t taken an EKG or anything????”
Me: “Nope. Apparently chest pain isn’t a big deal around here.”
Dad: “I’d be suing the hospital for $8 billion if there ends up being something wrong.”
Oh only $8 billion huh? Wow! We had a pretty good laugh about that.

They finally took him back and set him up for an EKG which involved several sticky patches attached to the hairiest part of his chest and lots of wires. The nurse laughed saying it was going to be fun ripping those off afterward and she told me I could do the honors if I wanted to. I liked her, but for some reason Andrew didn't find the humor. There was a monitor behind his head that showed his vitals and I had a pretty good time giving him the play by play of what it said. I have no idea what most of it meant, but I made it up as I went. At one point there was a loud beeping going on and flashing red lights and we both thought he was dying. Apparently we were wrong because no one came running and thankfully he is still alive. The EKG showed his heart is doing great, so that wasn't the issue.

The doctor poked, prodded, asked tons of questions, and decided to give him a GI Cocktail to see if it was heartburn. All that did was make his throat numb. Awesome. They then proceeded to take a chest x-ray which also showed his chest doing great. So you may be wondering what was wrong with him. Well honestly we don’t know and the doctor didn’t either. She thought it might be inflammation in the chest wall, so she ordered a shot of something that started with a T, 800 mg of ibuprofen every 8 hours, and if the pain returns he should go back to the hospital. Hmmmm…Did that help? No. Do we feel better about the situation? No. What are we going to do now? I don’t know.

OH…while we were waiting for the results of the x-ray we had to keep ourselves occupied (keep in mind that we were there for a total of 4 hours), so you know what we did? I’m kind of embarrassed to say, but Andrew was trying to teach me how to blow air out of the bottom of my mouth. You know how when you stick out your tongue and blow it makes a silly farty noise and your top lip kind of just flails around? Oh you don’t know. Dang it. Well take my word for it. So anyway when Andrew does this it is reversed and the air comes out of the bottom of his mouth and makes his bottom lip flail about. I couldn’t get it right for the life of me. The other people in the emergency room probably thought I was farting myself to death in our room.

When the doctor first entered our room she told us we had to stop laughing. I’m pretty sure she was joking, but she had to remind us we were in the ER. Side note: occasionally I revert back to about four years old just in case you were wondering. I was delirious, we were hungry, and Andrew was ready to tell them he felt better just to get out of there.

FYI: Just so you don’t think we’re some kind of freaks that think heart or chest problems are a laughing matter I thought you should know that Andrew was feeling fine and wanted to keep the mood light. If he wouldn’t have been feeling well or the pain returned believe me I wouldn’t have been laughing.

Let me start off by saying that Andrew does not like dark chocolate. I don’t either, but that’s not the point. We were in a gas station the other day pondering what to get and we stopped by the candy. Andrew is very fond of coconut and milk chocolate, so he was considering an Almond Joy or Mounds. Well…Mounds are made with dark chocolate, so that was definitely out and Almond Joys have nuts (he doesn’t particularly like nuts either). What to do? What to do? So I say, “Why don’t you get the Almond Joy and I'll eat your nuts?” He thought that was hysterical and took it upon himself to tell my parents the “funny” story.

I had to go to our local clinic today for a physical and drug screen for my new job. Let me start by saying it was such a pain. As you might have read here you know I hate doing a urine test. Today I managed to make it through peeing in a cup with out urinating all over myself (score for me). The worst part of today was not only did I have to pee in a cup, but my company also requires a hair sample to be taken. Apparently drugs can stay in your hair for a long time and it is a pretty accurate indicator of whether or not you have done drugs. The nurse asked me to sit in a chair and she separated my hair and cut a chunk out of the back at the root. That's right I said a chunk. I was very unhappy when I turned around and saw the amount of hair she cut off. It isn't at all noticable when you look at my hair, but I found the spot later in no time at all. Yes I am bitter, but I will get over it.

While I was sitting in the waiting room a guy and his 3 or 4 year old daughter walked in. I then witnessed this conversation between the two of them:

Girl - "What is that?"
Dad - "Chalk."
Girl - "Cock?"
Dad - "Chhhalllk."
Girl - "...Cock!"

I thought to myself oh the innocence of youth...how cute.

A few weeks ago we went sledding with some friends. It was so much fun!

Some friends of ours were having some computer trouble yesterday, so they called us. Why did they call us you may be asking. Well...Andrew seems to be the go to guy when something is wrong with computers. He has a wealth of knowledge about computers and if he doesn't know what the problem is or how to fix it he is a master of the Google machine. "Just Google it!" I always hear him say when I am having trouble figuring something out. So...he told our friends we would be over after dinner to take a look at their possibly diseased machine.

Speaking of diseased (not that they have any diseases, but read on). Our friends have been sick for quite some time with what I'm pretty sure could be called death. Unfortunately for them they haven't been able to get well for over a month now and Bryon has pneumonia (poor guy). Being the funny couple that we are we decided to get some masks to wear over to their house while Andrew worked.

It just so happened that we were going over to my parent's house for dinner and they happen to have these masks that we were hoping for. My dad said he could do us one better and he walked in with these white Tyvek suits. We were both very excited. It was going to be awesome when they opened the door and we were standing there looking like this:

We drove the entire way to their house wearing these and I think we were equally excited to see their reaction. I know we are silly, but we get a kick out of ourselves.

There is a warning on the masks we were wearing and it says, "This respirator helps protect against certain dusts and mists." Okay so far so good and then it moves on to say, "Misuse may result in sickness or death." Well that's not good. Don't worry no one was hurt in the making of this blog.

I was offered a job today and I accepted it. Yay yay yay! I am so happy. I will be working in an office which I am used to and I am pretty excited about it. I will blog more about it later, but that's all for now.