Lunch time!

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This is a map of all the places we have to choose from for lunch at work every day.

Eunice can be fun too *snicker*

Above is another sunrise picture. It is great when we can see these beautiful sunrises on our way to work. The horizon is so far away; much farther than I have ever seen it.

Well, I celebrated my birthday on the 18th. We decided to try a new place to eat for my birthday, not that we haven't eaten at a new place every night. Some co-workers told us to try out a place called The Saxony. We found out where that was and traveled down there. It was on the Eastern side of Hobbs, near the high school. When we got there, we found it to be a very small restaurant in an inn and it had no room for us. So, we went to another restaurant that Paul Sr., the owner of PKMJ, had told us about, called Pacific Rim. When we got there, it was closed. So, we went to Applebee's instead. I have been to so many birthday dinners at Applebee's while at college, so it seemed rather fitting that we went to the one in Hobbs for mine. We wanted to get some drinks afterwards since Pete Berry, the man we report to at the NEF plant, had given me $20 to buy a round of drinks. Since it was so late though, we decided to wait for another night.

So, my birthday wasn't too exciting. A few more coworkers came in to town, and one of them, Emily, joined us for dinner. The rest of the week was pretty uneventful. Work has been pretty good and kept some of us busy. The sad thing is that not all of us have been given tasks or jobs to do yet. And it's not because there isn't work to do. It's because that the people that know what work needs to be done and how to do it are too busy to train our coworkers who are not busy. I not only currently have a good amount of work to do, but also will be doing more starting tomorrow.

Saturday, we enjoyed a picnic at the park and pool in Eunice. None of us actually went into the pool, but it looked really nice. It had a couple of really neat slides. The food for the picnic was ok. The cool part was the prizes they gave at the end of the picnic, and the reason that is cool is because I won a Sony portable DVD player. It's one of those things that I probably would not have bought on my own, but I am kind of glad to have now. I'll be able to watch movies on the airplane trips that I will be going on.

Finally, there are the events of Sunday. Allison and I went to a rather charismatic church. I am pretty reformed, so this was quite outside my comfort zone. But, I still try to be open minded when at a church I am not familiar with. This church was not one that I would continue to go to however. They sang about 7 worship songs at the beginning of the service, all of which I had never heard before. At one point they talked about the construction they would be starting soon. They needed to raise 50 thousand dollars, and twenty thousand were going to be used for a large digital sign that would be placed at the entrance. Not only did this seem way too extravagant for a church, the reason the pastor used for buying this was that it adds a "wow factor" to the church. I would hope a pastor would be more concerned about advancing the Gospel than about "wowing" people that pass the church on the road.

That afternoon, we went to a neat public pool that had a number of water toys for kids. The most impressive of these was a big water slide. I was the first to go down, but, because the sign at the top said to go down in a seated position, I went down really slow. This made my friends laugh quite a bit. I explained that I was testing the slide in a safe and slow manner. You can't see the slide in this picture, but it was about twice as high as the little red one in the background.

After that, we had dinner at Quizno's and then turned in for the night to get ready for another week of work.

Hobbs (not to be confused with Hobbits)

It is Sunday afternoon and I have been living in Hobbs, New Mexico for about a week now.
Work down at the plant is interesting. For the most part, I am in a very large trailer which on the inside looks very much like a large office. The trailer is known as a ten-wide because it is the length of ten trailer widths. I have been working in document management. The days are pretty long -- we work 7-6 -- but, while we're out here, there's not much else to do. It's been very interesting meeting people from all different states and even some European countries. Everyone has been really friendly and quick to help us out.

Today I went to the First Presbyterian Church in Hobbs with Allison. It was a smaller church with mostly elderly people, but they were all friendly and made sure that they introduced themselves to us. One family there were from Holland (the country) and were also living in Hobbs because of the LES plant.

Today I also found a place to live after the hotel reservation is over. It is a small house in Hobbs with two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a living room. It comes completely furnished with pots, pans, linens, appliances, and even a TV. All the utilities and internet access are included in the $1300/mo rent. The reason I am looking at living in something other than a hotel is that I can earn even more money by switching to per diem. By doing that I will earn $100/day, tax free to use on my expenses. I plan on bringing my car down here since that will be a good deal cheaper than renting a car. I will be renting the place with my coworker, Dave Morris. Funny how again I will be rooming with another David. After four years of it in college, you would think I'd be done.

The scenery is a bit lacking out here. Every morning we drive by about 50 oil pumps in the field. One pump is actually located just about 10 yards away from the house I'm going to rent, as seen in the picture to the right. We can also smell the oil in a few stretches of the road. However, as seen in the picture at top, we get a great view of the sunrise.

It has been pretty wet this weekend, which is really abnormal for New Mexico. We should be getting a lot more sun later on. When we first arrived, it was in the high 90s. We have heard stories of temperatures in the 100s. That should be quite the experience. I also have yet to see any tarantulas or scorpions, but I hear they are common.

It's time for me to go out to dinner with Allison and Dave. The nice thing about being on expenses is that we can eat out all the time. Tonight we plan on going to the Chinese buffet, which we hear is pretty good. I will try to write again soon.

New Mexico

Hey friends,

This is Debbie again, updating you on the life of David Bacon.

For those of you who are not "in the know," David is currently on a business trip in New Mexico for two to five months. His team is helping to build the National Enrichment Facility down there. I keep telling him to work fast so he can come back soon.

I just moved from my parent's home in New York to an apartment in Pittsburgh, five minutes from the apartment David is renting. Though David was not able to help me move in yesterday, he did help me move a lot of my stuff last week, and my parents came with me to help this week.

Let me share with you what I know about David's journey thus far.

Yesterday David left Pittsburgh. His adventures began as he traveled safely to Eunice, New Mexico. He arrived in his hotel exhausted and ready to get a good night's sleep.

Today he got a tour of the job site and started working. He said the workers at the site keep confusing his team for interns. They keep having to tell people they work for PKMJ and are not interns. I am hoping to talk to David more tonight, but he isn't back from dinner yet.

Please thank God that David made it to New Mexico safely. Pray for God to bless his work and attitude as he spends lots of time with his co-workers. Hopefully he can be a witness and encouragement to those he works with. Also, pray that he finds a solid and supportive church to attend while he is there. We couldn't find any reformed churches within an hour and a half of his location when we searched the internet. I am praying for David to come back sooner rather than later, but God is in control and His plans are way better than my plans.

Thanks for your prayers! I will keep this updated and perhaps get David to do the same.

Love,
Debbie

Wow, David has not updated this for awhile... I'm taking advantage of this chance to do it for him. This weekend, David:
1) got a visit from his girlfriend, aka, me
2) went with me to sign my lease
3) got a PA drivers license
4) bought a 2005 Honda Civic!!!
5) made up a phrase to remember the 3 letters of his new license plate (GZY- Green Zaps Yellow)
6) went to Katie and Tom's wedding with me
7) rented some movies with me and watched them
8) saw The Dark Knight again

plus some other stuff!

Thanks for reading!

Love,
Debbie

The night the house was full

Last night, a small Christian School in State College called Grace Prep, brought 55 students to Geneva to spend the night. This was a massive undertaking and took all of the Bed and Breakfast staff to house them all. I personally was in charge of two of these students. Three other guys from Patterson also had their own prospectives amounting to 12 prospectives for our house total. After we all had dinner, we took the kids to our house to drop off their stuff. We decided to then go to the fieldhouse to play Basketball. However, one of the kids, Tyler, was not interested in braving the cold again if he didn't have to. So, I stayed behind with him and just watched TV with him. He turned out to have a mental disability, and talked about some very interesting things (such as the Pokemon story he was currently writing, and how his amazing Summoner in Final Fantasy X was better than a Dark Mage). Later on the rest of the guys came back, and they proceeded to watch the TV as one guy played all the way through Super Mario Bros. 3. This didn't end til about 1:30 and the kids finally went to sleep after that. This morning we took them down to Alex's for breakfast and they had other things planned with the school for the rest of the morning. Apparently they were going to the Symphony after that.

It seemed kind of strange that this overnight took place. First of all, none of the kids had applied to Geneva, and most of the seniors were already accepted to Penn State. Secondly, the school they came from has only about 55 kids in it. So, basically this whole trip was for the whole school. third of all, they had gone to the Carnegie Science Center before coming to Geneva, and were headed to the Symphony tonight. This all sums up to what looks like a field trip for a whole school where the housing was paid for by Geneva's admission dept. Now, I am not gonna complain because I did get paid $40 just to have a bunch of kids sleep in the lounge and for me to basically babysit one for a couple hours, but what the school did seems very much like usury. They came to Geneva under the guise of having kids who were interested in the school and wanting to learn more about it. What it turned out to be was a school of kids going on a field trip and wanting to save money on hotel rooms by staying at a small Christian college that already has its own problems with housing. I and some of the other guys from my house believe that our admissions dept should have been a little more hesitant in allowing this trip to occur as it did.

8 Bells

This past Friday was the 8 Bells concert as part of the Mars Alliance Church's Valentine's Day dinner. We had a great time. We sang for about half an hour, which is the longest I have sung with the 8 Bells aside from the reunion concert last semester. The funniest part was when we asked for audience participation and chose Ben Buchmann and his fiance, Heather. We then proceeded to sing Sunshine to Heather while Ben sat in a chair at the other end of the stage. Ben is a senior Electrical Engineer at Geneva so I know him pretty well. I thanked him after the concert for being such a good sport while we serenaded his fiance. It was so funny. We got a lot of laughs for that. After the concert we went to the Chick Fil A I work at and sang to the three girls that were closing the store that night. For our performance one of my managers, Kris, gave us three free milkshakes which was really nice of her. We then came back to campus. We hope to use the money we received from the church to buy ourselves some t-shirts and we will also take orders for our fans to buy some if they wish. Should be pretty sweet. The design I came up with that the guys seem to like is the one below. That's the profiles of all eight of from L-R Brendon, Tyler, Brian W., Me, Brian F., Steve, Thom, and Jon.