Jail Break

Today we cut a door into the part of the shed that is now a chicken coop.... No sooner did I have that door open before the girls made a break for it. I was going to build a pen for them but it is too late now. Just have to wait for tonight and see if any come back into the coop or not.

The black chicken looks like she is daring me to put her back in the coop, just try it and see what happens.. LOL... I think she looks more like a crow then a chicken..

Run for it the door is open!!!!!!

Yesterday goats Today was Chickens

Yesterday I built a fence in the goat run to make it faster to catch the little kids. Wonders of wonders it worked, I was able to get all four under shelter for the night in no time at all.

Today was a new ball game, I went to First Monday in Canton just to look around for a few hours. I really did not think I would find anything that I was willing to buy, but as happens I was wrong. After walking all the way down and back ( Dog alley ) I had enough and was headed back to the truck when I say a little dog run into a small stall hidden in the bush. Being a dog lover I went to see what he/she was up to and ran into a chicken stall.... This little old man and his wife started talking to me as if I had known them all my life and was just dropping in for a visit. As we talked I looked around and saw two chickens laying, now that was the best way to make a sale with me.. I then proceeded to buy the two with eggs and four others that I liked the looks off.. Then had to get the truck to come back for the chickens...

As soon as I walked back into the stall to pick up the chickens a lady was waiting and wanted to know if I would sell her four of the six chickens I had just brought? She was willing to pay me $10 more for each then I had paid. Thought about it then decided if then chickens are that good I should keep them??? So home we go..

Problem we have no chicken coop, now I spend the next four hours putting together a coop that will at least hold the chickens for now. No door to the outside yet, will have to wait until tomorrow when I am a bit rested and can think on how to do it. Until then the girls are free to eat and drink inside only..

Back on the farm

Today is the second day off the boat, got on the chopper just over 60 hours ago to come home. Now working on getting the garden weeded and things set up for having goats, and hoping to find some chickens this weekend.. My big deal today was making friends with the goats, and building a new fence to devide the pen into smaller sections to help get the babies in the shelter at night, the little suckers are fast and not easy for an old folk like me..

Chopper Lands on The Snapper

The first chopper to land on the deck of the Snapper in over a year , and the first when we have all papers in order since I have been on the boat.

Well folks, today I witnessed for the first time a chopper landing on the deck of the Snapper.

Will this mean the end of small boat transfers during crew change?? I do not know, but it was nice to see one land here. It was only on deck for a few min. five maybe... But it does prove we can have one land, and that is good news for all.

And Farwell, such a short visit.

Return to the Snapper

I have returned to the boat and it feels different. The boat is almost silent, no joking or teasing among the crew, and without TAP no whistling to be heard at all. Been back five days now and even if no one will speak openly of the loss to the crew, it can be felt in the way we all go about our jobs. Moral is low and the seas are high.

Even with the sun out today the waves are between 7 and 11 footers. It is enough to rock the boot, and if last night was an example toss me out of bed.

So I stay here in the GOM until May 26th when I get to go home for a week before going to school for a week.

Been watching the news about the flu in Mexico and hoping it does not make its way to the states, or if it does it stays clear of me..


check this blog for what is going on at the ranch well I am gone......http://ourtexasranchito.blogspot.com/

Furniture for the home

Well for the past week or so we have been looking around for items for the house. My bedroom is almost done, I even painted it and put up curtains. Only one or two items and it will be done, problem is I still do not know what the last item or two will be. I did not know what color to paint the room until five minutes before I picked it out and was not sure it was what I wanted until the room was done. Curtains, were first planed to be multi color, but in the end white is what was hung.

The newest addition to the house is a sofa that PIA seems to like..

We also made changes to the cabinet handles to liven up the place, what y'all think???

Moving into a house again

After living in an RV it is a lot of work to move back into a house. We have been shopping each morning for furniture and picking it up in the afternoon, setting it up at night. Did get lucky because the city of Canten has a big market every first Monday of the month and bargains can be found. So far my bedroom has cost me a total of $975 for everything, that is a bed, box spring, mattress, lamp, night stand, dresser, chair, and bookcase. Still looking for a few items but not sure what.. Spent $300 so far on living room furniture, not finding what we want with this and I only pay half of the common stuff.

So that is what I have been doing for the last few days and more the likly will be doing for the rest of my break. Will try to update the blog each day as things change..

First day

First day moving into the new place. It is a double wide mobile on 10ac of land. Lets go back one day to the 2ed when we closed, less then five hours before closing we got a call from the bank we closed at telling us the closing price we had to have was 2,400.00 more then first told. Now we have to drive 2 hours to our bank to get the money and back to close. That about killed anything else we might wanted to do. Once at the bank we asked if we would get the keys for the house so we could move into it the next day, ( we have to leave the park ) told that as soon as we sign we will get the keys. HAH!!!! After all signing is done and the bank has our money, we are told the sellers agent is not answering her phone so we can not get any keys yet. However we are told that the keys will be gotten to us by morning. Later that night we are told the sellers agent has left the keys in the shed inside a blue pie tin.

We arrive at the farm at 9:30am on the 3ed and look for the keys... No key can be found anywhere. Call our agent, call the sellers agent, the called the sellers agents boss ( the broker ) he tells us we have NOT closed and have no right to any keys... We are now seeing red... Our agent calls us back and we tell her what the broker said, she calls him. He then calls us back and tells us we can go and pick up the keys. This means we have to drop the trailer, unhook, and drive to another city to get the keys we had been told would be given to us the day before. It is now noon!!!!!

We drop the trailer, get the truck stuck for about 45 min before we could get on the road.. Now get this ....... when we arrive at the office of the sellers agent she is not in, so some other person has the keys and we have to show our drivers LIC before the B^&^^ will let us have OUR key. Only one key?????

Had a late lunch and went shopping for beds. Here we got lucky found both our beds and everything we needed. Went home put the beds together and called it a day..

New Home

Just moved into a new place April 3ed, 2009.. Been a strange move to say the least. First we were told that the place had no restrictions, and that the tital was clean and clear. So we made an offer and it was accepted, so far so good. At first the closeing date was set for March 31st and we agreed. Then the fun starts.

After the home inspecton was done and the seller moved out, we were asked if we could a week early. We thought about it and said sure no problem. It would give us an extra week to get things done before I go back to the boat. So we check out of the RV park we are staying at and pack up to go drive five hours North to stay at a Park closer to the city we will close in. The day we are leaving the share pins lifting the feet on the RV snap and have to be replaced before we can hook up and go. Now we have to run around to find replacement pins to fix the problem. After 3 hours and several trips into town we are hooked up and ready to go.. Opps, phone call from the realter... we can not close... the sellers never filed papers in court after the farther died, so the tital is not clear after all. Then we get a fax telling us that hay, you do have some restrictions on the property. After talking about everything and being told we can still close on the 31st we decide to close on the 31st. It is now around 2 pm so we decide to drive up the next day.

At first we only scheduled a few days at a state park hoping all would go well and we would close on the 31st... No such luck, got called Friday the 27th and found out the papers had not yet been filed, so it would be the 31st before and could be filed at this point. Now we will have to extent our stay at the park again, we can only stay until the 3ed because it is already filled past that date. Realtors told us that if the papers are filed on the 31st we "might be able to close on the 2ed of April.

Good news papers got filed on the 31st and we close on the 2ed.

Good Bye My Friend

March 23rd 2009, I lost a shipmate and friend. This today will be my way of saying good bye. T.A.P. was a person that was easy to like and very hard to be mad at, he teased me out of many a bad mood when I was working on the boat. He could see the funny side of life when I could not, but had a way of showing it to me even when I did not really want to see it. He laughed at my jokes when nobody else did.

One of the strange parts of this is I am not sure if he thought of me as a friend or not. We never got together off the boat. He lived in LA. and I in TX. He worked for Marine crew I for Seismic.

I see him working and laughing, sometimes joking about how easy it would be to get hurt doing what we do. We do our jobs knowing we could be hurt or worse but try not to think about it until something like this happens. What went wrong that day??? was it the hook, the line, rogue wave, or just bad timing??? We may never know the answers to why it happened. All I know at this time is that the small boat he was in capsized, everyone and everything was tossed out. People were caught under the boat, three came out and were picked up one was not.

Coast Guard searched for him for over 72 hours, covered over 800 sq miles, never recovered him.

So goodbye my friend goodbye..