Deer Lease Weekend

This weekend we had a huge family outing to the deer lease. All 6 of us loaded up and spent a couple nights in the camper hanging out. Yes, that is a 24 ft camping trailer with two adults two 40lb +/- dogs and 2 10lb +/- dogs(Foley has gained a little weight in her older age and finally passed 10lbs) Anyhow, yes we have electricity and water out there so it isn't totally roughing it. For Rocky this was really his first experience running around the pastures with the big dogs and what an experience it was for him. I have attached a video of him ridding on the trailer with the big dogs while we set up a feeder this morning. I have also attached a video of Blake shooting a black powder rifle which packs a pretty big bang. I spent my time at the trailer taking down the ugly generic border and curtains that comes in campers and putting up camoflage border and making brown curtains with camoflage valances. It was a good weekend, with the exception of Blake not getting a deer and the fact that I am having to deal with dog gas from them eating to many scraps. It is nice to be able to get away from the city for awhile and just hang out.

Soooo Blake!

This is an email I received from Blake today. Thought I would pass it on, I am sure you can all see him saying this as well as I can. :) Enjoy!

I forgot to mention that we all had to start our day by being threatened of being fired for not wearing our safety glasses and gloves. People are talking about how out of control they are getting with the rules right now. Even the drillers are talking about how all of this is a bunch of BS. I'm looking for them to make an example of someone soon and run someone off for not wearing their gloves or glasses or touching a load or something. I can tell you that it won't be me! I'll tell you all about this when I get home. Oh and dirty jobs didn't have anything on me today. My red shirt was black...I just had to get a new one. I ingested plenty of oil and grease today too but it's all good...it's environmentally friendly :)

It has been awhile!

It has been a while since I last posted on the blog so, I thought I would do a quick update. Blake and I both survived Ike in our own ways. :) We had over 400 guests from the gulf coast in the City of Arlington for over a week. Luckily, we were able to get them all back to their home towns. Blake's ship weathered the storm from the south, they then went back up onto location and experienced some of the backside of the storm. What an experience for that land man. :) My mom and I had a cruise planned that we were afraid would end up cancelled due to the storm, however we were able to cruise out of the Houston port and had a great time on our trip. I was able to catch up on alot of sleep I had lost over the past month. We had two great ports of call and did some shopping in Cozumel and enjoyed the beautiful beaches of Progresso Yucatan. Anyhow, I have spent the last week trying to catch up at work. Blake is back out on the rig now and hopefully this will be a much calmer hitch for him.

The Water is Blue and there are Bubbles

Apparently this is what large waves look like as they are crashing into the side of Blakes ship. I spoke with him this afternoon and all is well. They are having major high waves crashing into the ship. He says that you can see dolphins playing in the swells which is pretty cool. Things are apparently going OK and they were headed back into the south east side of the storm and were going to let it push them back around to their location. I am working 6:30am-7:30pm right now at our Emergency Operations Center, we have a few hundred evacuees sheltering in our city right now. So, until Ike has decided to go away and stop raining and water receeds and we can send everyone back to their homes I can resume my normal work schedule. Hope everyone enjoys their weekend, I will be getting up early and working late!

Blake update

Just a quick update, I was wrong about Blake going norht. They actually went south and are somewhere off the coast of Mexico around Tampico area. I spoke to him today ae sounded and he sounded good. He said that they were expecting pretty rough seas over the next couple of days and may not be able to go outside if it was too bad. That is really all I have for now, I will update everyone as things come about.

New experiences

For the most part, the most water Blake has ever experienced in his life has been the Frio River. Now ,I know there was that one time when the river flooded and he lost his truck and had to be rescued off the front porch in a boat. However, I don't think that was anything compared to what he is experiencing right now or will experience in the next few days. At this point his drill ship has pulled up and is running(or so they call it) from hurricane Ike. Basically, the ship is moving Northerly at about 8mph, last I heard the storm was moving about 14 mph. Needless to say, they will be experiencing some rough seas and he will get the chance to learn if he really gets sea sick. He says that there could be a couple of days that they can not even go outside at all if things get bad enough. So, lets all keep praying that the storm keeps moving West and does not take a Northern turn. Check back for more information as it becomes available, however it is possible that he will not be able to communicate with me as the move about. Take care!!!!

Hurricane Ike

OK, seriously first Gustav and now Ike. I ended up working half of Blakes time home on hurricane Gustav operations. We had over 300 evacuees sheltered in the City of Arlington, which was pretty awesome to see all of my hard work come together. We were able to set up all shelters with cots, blankets, pillows, etc. All things that seem minor but consumed my first 3 months of work in the city. Everything ran rather smoothly with the exception of a few things but all in all we(the city) couldn't be happier with how things turned out. Now, as we try to recover from the countless hours worked last we begin to plan for Hurricane Ike. It appears that Ike will be hitting Texas and we will be having an operation again this weekend. As for Mr. Blake, he is out on a ship in the middle of a ship in the Gulf of Mexico with hurricane Ike barrelling down on him. They are beginning to run from it however and will be trying to get out of the path and take cover as much as they can. Trust me I will be monitoring this situation closely. :) Apparently they were having a hard time getting supply ships out to them after Gustav and were beginning to run low on food. On Monday a supply ship finally arrived and he relayed it to me as children at xmas going through all the bags and boxes of groceries. He then informed me that the children also had fun with the dry ice. I will keep updating the blog as to what is going on with him out there. Take care!!! Love to all!!!!

Hurricane Gustav

There are days I love my job, like when I get to hang out at the fire stations or basically spend millions of dollars buying stuff that makes grown men excited like a young boy on xmas morning. This weekend is one of the days I hate my job. It is Sat. morning and I am at work listening to the state of Texas tell us we are going to be getting bus loads of evacuees coming to our city. Looks like I don't get a holiday weekend this time. :) The good news is Blake is in Alpine and not out on the rig, so I am not trying to work and be worried about what he is doing. I did want to give out a neat website that I have that shows the location of his ship, you can also see every cruise ship in the world which is cool too. Anyhow it is http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/cruiseships.phtml. The call sign to look up Blakes rig isV7HC6 and is located at 26 degrees N and 91 degrees W if you want to look at where it sits in relation to storms. Anyhow. just a little fun FYI for some of you. I hope everyone enjoys there weekend and thinks of me sitting in an office eating old stale food out of the police vending machines. :)

OMG!!

Thank god Blake was home for this one or I would have totally freaked out! I had to come to work early today and was trying to be very quiet and not disturb sleeping beauty while I was getting ready. I didn't turn on any lights, quietly let the dogs out and back in. Well I hadn't been at the office long when Blake sent me an email saying Rocky had found a snake in the hallway(yes, the very hallway I had just walked down multiple times this morning in the dark) and for those of you unfamiliar with my home, there are no windows in the hallway and it is very dark when the light is off. Attached is a picture of the little guy. Had I been home alone and this was found while Blake was gone I would have been the crazy lady calling 911 to get a snake out of my house. For those of you who are wondering, Blake is at Home Depot as I type getting new door strips.

The Kill

OK, so there are things I take for granted when Blake is here. Taking care of dead animals is one of them. I heard a commotion in the backyard and opened the sliding doors just in time to see Bodie with a tail in his mouth and Rocky with the body of a squirrel in his mouth. This was a fresh kill and they wanted to play with it. I called my dad and asked what I should do, to which he said throw it over the fence. I informed him that this was not Monahans and over the fence was my neighbors yard. So, I grabbed the pooper scooper and scooped it up and put it in a trash bag. Trash day was three days away so I put it in the lawn equipment shed, which turned out to be a bad idea because three days later the shed was pretty rancid when I went to dispose of the poor little guy. I will end there and not expose you to the details of what happened next. :)

Manscaping

Blake has decided that he is going to grow his hair out again because he doesn't have to look groomed at work anymore. It has been around three months since his last haircut so, he agreed to go and get some shape put into his hair but continue to let it grow. Well, I made him an appointment with my hair dresser. As with any salon, he was taken for his shampooing. Now picture this, Blake in a salon laying in a shampoo chair feet propped up on a trash can because he is too long for the chair. While he is laid back the cute, bubbly hair dresser says "Ok, I am not going to give your girl eyebrows but I am going to give you two." And before he knows it hot wax is slapped between his eyes. :) Yes my friends and family Blake Biddick got his eyebrows waxed!

Blow it.

I have not had much time to blog lately, plus I am still new at this and forget to add something that might be of interest to others. As many of you know my sister and her family are moving to Canada :( , last week she and the girls decided to bless us with there presence one last time and came to stay with us a few nights. We all went out to eat dinner and Ryleigh had to go tinkle, so being the nice aunt that I am I took her in. After she had completed her business she asked if the toilet was the kind that flushed on its own. I informed her that it was, however for whatever reason it did not do it. I then instructed her that she would have to push the black button to flush it, she reached over and pushed on what appeared to be the non working sensor. I in my oh so formal Texas verbage told her "No, buh-low-it", she looked over at me like I was crazy leaned over and blew as hard as she could on the sensor. After I stopped laughing at her inability to understand me and my inability to have a 4 year old understand me I said "No honey, push the little black button Below It." :)

Hurricane Dolly

Ok, so Blake finally gets to go out on a rig and wouldn't you know it, a hurricane comes through. Needless to say this past week has been a week of all new experiences for this little country boy!! "Holy shit, I almost fell out of my chair the boat is rocking so hard." :) Yes, this is what he tells me the other night. But no worries we are fine just large swells, a rocking boat oh and we can't go out on the deck alone because you could fall overboard and no one would know. They have not done much work in 2 days because of the storms but he is getting rocked to sleep everynight, so it isn't all bad. He will be home on Friday, yea!!! Sorry I have not been totally up on reports this week but it is hard being a single mom of 4. Love to you all!!

Neat as heck!

Need I say more!! These are the words that Blake said to me when I asked how it was. He said that the helicopter ride out was ok and has been pretty busy with orientation and just getting to know his way around the rig. It looks like he will be working the noon-midnight shift, so he will either be making phone calls home mid morning or late at night. Either way I will be doing my best to talk to him as much as possible. He thinks he will only be gone a week this first time and then back for two before officially getting into the 2 on 2 off rotation. This will be a nice babystep into this new lifestyle. Check back for more information later!!!!

Home away from home

Here is a picture of Blakes new home away from home. You can go to www.deepwater.com and look at the Gulf of Mexico Fleet and the name of his ship is the Discoverer Deep Seas, which provides more information, none of which I understand what it means.

It has begun

Well, the time we have been waiting for since March has now arrived. Blake has officially gone offshore. After a couple days of ups and downs and various plans he has left for New Orleans today. Once arriving there this evening he will take off at 3:20am for the heliport and leave for the rig via helicopter at 5:30am. Apparently he will be about 200 miles off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico. I brought it to his attention this morning that his first helicopter ride to the rig will take place in total darkness. We have no idea what to expect, when we will talk again or even when he is coming home. We know that right now it is 2 weeks at the most and 1 week at the least. Please check back as I wil be posting updates here as I get them.

4th of July

We had another great 4th of July at the Biddick cabin on the Frio, that was until we headed home. The normally 5hr drive took us 8hrs because traffic was so horrible. Because there were three of us ridding in the cab of the truck the boys(Bodie and Woody) rode in the back of the truck until we started doing 10mph on I35. At this time we decided we should put them in the cab before they baked. So here we are me and two large dogs in the back seat of the truck. Everything was great until Woody had to throw up and we had to get to the shoulder of I35. Once that cleanup was done we were back on the road and decided to take the backroads, this added time and mileage to the trip but at least we were moving at a higher rate of speed than 10mph. It is times like this that I truely miss that long open space of highway between Fort Stockton and Ozona. If you have ever been there you know what I am talking about and understand how a drive like that beats I35 on a holiday weekend anytime!

The Newest Biddick

OK, so he isn't really a Biddick, he is a Montgomery and we are thinking of hyphenating it to Rocky Montgomery-Biddick. This is Rocky, many of you may know him from his previous life in the Montgomery household. With Jeramy, Jen and the girls moving to Canada we have agreed to maintain custody of the rat terrior until they return. It took a couple of days but he has settled into a routine with the other dogs and is doing very well. He did mark his territory once on Bodie's bed, but like I said only once. :) And no, that is not Blakes hand and he is not still laying in the bed playing with the dog while I get dressed for work. :)

The Blogging Biddick Begins

OK, so here I go, this is my first time blogging. I will start off with a warning, never correct my spelling or grammer. I know it is wrong, bad, incorrect, whatever but, I grew up in West Texas and just never really learned all the proper things. :) I don't know how often I will write or if I really have much to say but, as our lives change and our families move farther and farther away from us I hope we can use this as a tool to make us all feel like we are still as close as we allow ourselves to be. R. Biddick