It's been a tough couple of days. We've continued to have problems with the deeper water zones that seem determined to spit mud and water at us at every opportunity (see night photos of mud geysers on the rig floor). Part of our problem is that a leak in the shallow casing prevents us from controlling our mud pressure in the wellbore. We decided to try to correct this with a cement "squeeze" and called in our expert (expensive) friends from Halliburton to do the job (see photos). After an impressive performance of slicing and dicing and mixing and pumping yesterday evening, we came back to the site this morning to find our leak alive and well. We're going to give them one more shot at it - and if that doesn't work, I'll be pleased to offer them one-way tickets to another, somewhat more challenging Halliburton job I recall hearing about. We are presently at 8500' and holding. -Don Thomas-