Category Archives: linework

It’s official!

We’re a true married couple now! For the first time in our 10.5 months of marriage, we live together! Woohoo!

When I got home from work on Thursday, Steven was already there. That’s certainly not what I am used to. We took a picture to mark the occasion. :o)

Steven has changed companies once again, but this time it is bringing him closer to home. He is going to be working in Searcy and driving back and forth everyday. It still hasn’t really sunken in with me though. Right now it just feels like a long weekend. He is off this week, except Wednesday, and he will be gone hunting on Thursday and Friday, so this week will still kind of be the same.

It’s going to be very odd with him coming home every night. The last time we spent a whole week together? Oh, that would be our honeymoon. Two weeks from now, we will either be settling into a routine or in jail for trying to kill each other. Wish us luck. :0)

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Day #22 on Hurrican Ike

I was finally able to speak to Steven again tonight. I talked to him this morning, as they were driving from Houma, LA to Texas, but a lot of the phone towers are out in Southern Texas, so we hadn’t spoken since about 11:00 this morning. His crew is staying in Woodville, TX. Phone service is sketchy where they are working, but closer to the hotel it is ok. He has absolutely no idea when he will be home. Today was day 22. (And no, I’m not sitting around counting. I honestly had to look at my calendar to figure it out.) The map below shows where they are.

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My lineman will be home…

Drum roll, please….

Hopefully next month. 🙁

He will definitely be in Louisiana until Hurricane Ike hits at the end of this week. If it hits the U.S., which is pretty much a given, they will head there as soon as possible.

Here’s a little trivia for you.

Officially, hurricane season in the U.S. is from June 1 to November 30. Snow/ice season can start in the Oklahoma/Kansas/Missouri area (all Steven’s territory) as early as October. Yes, as in next month. And as we saw this year, snow can continue to fall in March. As long as it isn’t ice, we are ok though. So, basically I have absolutely no idea when my husband will be home, or for how long. I won’t be surprised if they get home at the beginning of October, and are back out on the road by mid-November.

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Another Update from the Lineman on Storm

I just talked to Steven for the first time today! I’ll admit, I was getting stressed. I knew he would call when he could. I just didn’t know when that would be. He said he’d try to call again tomorrow, too.

They are now in Houma, LA. (See maps below.) I talked to him yesterday just before they drove down and again when they arrived – after driving through the hurricane- and I hadn’t heard from him since. Here is what he had to say:

– No power in the town at all.
– They do have running water.
– Only one person on his crew has cell phone service, and he is on “Roam.”
– They slept in a shelter last night, but will have a hotel room tonight.
– They’ll be there a while. He thinks about a month. He also said that he has been told this is Entergy’s second largest outage ever – second only to Katrina. They didn’t even do any repair work today. They just spent the day cleaning poles out of the streets.

Please keep these guys in your prayers.

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Frequently Asked Questions

With Steven being gone this week, I’ve gotten lots of questions. Actually, I’ve only gotten a few more than normal. People usually have lots of questions as soon as Steven mentions traveling or working out of state. I’m not sure if people are concerned or just curious as to how our crazy life works. I guess as newlyweds that barely live together, we are a bit of an oddity.

Anyway, here are a few of the most commonly asked questions.

Q. Who does he work for?
A. Razz Electrical Services. They are based in Louisiana. This answer has actually changed a few times in the last few years. He started out at U.U.C.I. from Conway (he was working in the Fayetteville area), and he then went to Pike Electric, which is based in North Carolina (he worked in MO and TX).

Q. What exactly does he do?
A. Steven is a lineman. He builds power lines. He has been in the linework business for almost 2 years now. He loves his work and plans to do it until he retires.

Q. Isn’t that dangerous? Don’t you worry about him?
A. Yes and yes. I try not to think about it though. I’ve watched him work, and I know that he takes the proper safety precautions. That’s all I can ask of him. I can’t control what other people do, so I just pray. In my own little world he is getting up and going to work and it stops with the word “work.” I do pray for him everyday, but I don’t think much about what he is doing other than that. I just remind myself that technically he is no safer doing that than any other job. When God says it is time to go, it’s time to go.

Q. Do they pay good?
A. We aren’t starving. 🙂

Q. Do they pay for his hotel/food/gas?

A. Hotel-Yes. Food- He gets paid a weekly per diem. Gas- No.

Q. When does he come home?
A. Normally he leaves Sunday evenings, works Monday – Thursday and comes home Thursday nights.

Q. Do you stay at your house, all by yourself all week?
A. Honestly, I get this more than I ever thought I would. The thought of doing anything else never crossed my mind until people started asking. Yes, I stay at our house. Where else would I go? We have 3 dogs and a cat, and I don’t think they would travel well. I have always enjoyed being home by myself and am not bothered by it.

Q. How do you do it? You must miss him a lot…
A. We lived over an hour away from one another when we met. In the 4 years we dated, we lived in the same town less than 18 months, and that was broken into two segments. I got most of my crying out the first 3 months we dated, when he lived in Batesville. (He would drive to Jonesboro on Friday night or Saturday afternoon and would go back on Sunday evening. I hated Sundays.) He went to doing linework in the fall of 2006, and we were forced to get used to it pretty quick when he spent a few weeks in Oklahoma that October working his first ice storm. Honestly, you get used to it though and fall into the routine. It isn’t always easy, but it isn’t the end of the world either.

Q. Will he ever work close to home?
A. I have no idea. There is always the possibility of his crew getting a random assignment close to home, but it isn’t very likely. Other than that, the answer is no, unless he gets a job with a local co-op. We’re waiting until after I graduate to worry with that though.

Q. What will you do when you have kids?
A. I’ll send them on the road with him. 🙂

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I just talked to Steven.

I figured it would be easier to post the updates of his whereabouts here, as opposed to answering questions like, “Have you talked to Steven today?” “Where’s your husband?” and “When will he be home?” a million different times in the next week or so.

Anyway, I just talked to him and he is still in San Benito, TX.

See the red arrow? That’s where he is right now. He’s about 13 or 14 hours from Jonesboro. I think. Ok, I just checked Mapquest. Apparently it is approximately a 15 hr. 4 min. drive. Nevertheless, he said the area they are currently working in doesn’t look too bad, but he’s heard from his bosses that the other side of town is a total mess. He believes he will be there until the end of this week at the very least, but that’s not counting if they get sent to another town after that. They are working 16-18 hr. days, stopping only to eat a meal or crash in bed at the hotel at night.

He said all safety is 100% mandatory right now because of all the different types of power they have there (wind, solar, wire electricity, etc.). I still worry though. People have been known to concoct some crazy power sources after storms. Please pray for the safety of my husband and all the other linemen in Texas tonight.

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