Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Christmas Eve, 2019

No daily activity report today.

Active rigs:

$61.1112/24/201912/24/201812/24/201712/24/201612/24/2015
Active Rigs5669534162

 WTI up almost 1% today. WTI back to $61.

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Christmas Eve


What did Beto say, "I was born to be in it!" or something to that effect.

Well, I was born to be a curmudgeon.

The extended family is celebrating Christmas Eve at an upscale Chinese restaurant tonight; and, after dinner will come home -- their home, not my home -- to have dessert and exchange gifts.

I won't be joining them. I elected to stay home tonight. Relax. Light dinner. Music. Maybe a bit of ET on the "E" network.

And a little bit of time looking at the Bakken.

There is really only one day when everything, absolutely everything is closed down in the US, and that's Christmas Day. Maybe things have changed in some cities but it's been my experience that the loneliest day for a traveler in the US is Christmas Day. Nothing is open.

It must have been Christmas, 1985, or thereabouts. I was stationed in Germany with the United States Air Force. I held dual service codes: pediatrician and flight surgeon. I was notified a few days before Christmas that I would be the attending physician for a critically ill infant that was being flown from a US hospital in Germany to Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, DC. It was my first medevac flight ever. And it was going to be a long C-5 (? -- or a C-141? I forget) -- flight across the Atlantic with an infant on a ventilator.

With little advance warning, I told my family (wife and two young daughters) that I would not be spending Christmas with them.
 
We landed at Andrews AFB, DC, on/about Christmas Eve. After getting the critically-ill infant to Walter Reed I was on my own. I found a place to stay and then waited until December 26 to start looking for a flight back to Germany. No, you don't just book a flight on United. One must look for USAF transportation.

Be that as it may, I spent, perhaps, the loneliest day in my life -- up to that point -- alone, in Washington, DC. It was then that I learned that nothing was open on Christmas. Including places to eat.

Whatever.

The next day, December the 26th, and everything was open again. Another few days in Washington, DC, and then back to Germany.

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