Ouch, I hurt my back

First I went to the city playfields to do some softball practice. I had invited Brandon to come along as it appears he is going to joining out team after two of Kelly’s teammates decided to return for the season. Brandon came and we mainly did BP. I pitched some and the rest of the time I worked on some fielding as people hit.

One play I was going back for ball and Brandon was running in. He went into a slide and sort of ran in to me. I fell over and used my arms to keep me from crashing down on him. I knew I tweaked my back in the process. As it would turn out, as the night went on, it would get worse.

I then went to Springfest at WSU. There were four of us there. It was a good time. Mr. Belding from Saved by the Bell was there. He was taking photos with people and signing autographs. He had a long line of people. I was standing near the front waiting for my turn. He had to leave early in the event because of somewhere else he had to be. As the last people were getting their photos I showed interest. He said “I gotta take a photo for the firemen.” Bien and I got a photo with him. Before he left he also signed some photos for us. It was pretty cool.

We spent most of the time watching the events as they were happening. They had some skiers and snowboarders doing some tricks. They had Mad Chad doing his chainsaw juggling. They also had Kyle Cease from Comedy Central doing stand up comedy. The capper of the night was the band Everclear. They did about an hour and a half long performance. It was pretty cool. I only knew a couple of the songs they did.

I got a chance to do one of those strongman games where you hit a sledge hammer down on a board that would send a weighted slider up to a bell. I got it to go on my first try. I also got some photos of some of the reserves who were off duty. They got into a human bowling ball and we had some fun with them.

When we got back to the station my camera fell out of my pocket. I had run it over with the car. It was broken. That really sucked.

Big Poker Party at Mikes

When I got up this morning, I decided that I would get into my den and start to work on the ASP.NET stuff I have been trying to learn. I also had planned on getting the photoboard down at Station Thirty-One updated. I had the photos sent to Rite Aid. I picked them up and went to the station. I cut them out, got the photoboard, printed off the new names and posted them. It took a while to get done because there were a lot of changes to make.

When I was done I went to my place to work more of the ASP.NET application I started. I am making a For Sale By Owner website where someone could post information about a house they are selling. It would be a way to have a web presence. Mike came over and picked up my poker table.

I went to Mike’s close to seven o’clock. I got my seat on the table. I was doing okay for a little while. In fact I was up a fair amount for a while. I was making all the right plays. Then all of a sudden it started to go down hill. I lost a couple hands in a row. I was starting to bleed my chips out. I got a hand with an open ended straight. I also had myself a middle pair for the flop. Only to find the other guy decided to put me all in.

I made the call and lost. I sat down and played some cards and dice with some other people as we were waiting for the cash game. We played until two in the morning. When I left Mike’s I had won back all the money I had lost and went home with an extra seventeen bucks on the night.

When I got home I watched a TV show about the scarries movies. One as a Clockwork Orange. There was a scene they showed in the movie. It was a part of a movie I remember seeing a young kid. I never knew the name of the movie nor much about the movie. But when I saw the part in the TV show I finally realized what movie it was that I has seen and now I can attempt to see it again.

Web Dev Videos

I spent part of the day working through the videos for web development with the new ASP.NET two point oh stuff. I also got the photos for the photoboard sent off to RiteAid via their website.

I went to Ace to get some new wall anchors for my shelving system. The middle bar was coming out of the wall. I tried to use some mollys the other day, but they did not work as expected. I got a different system to try, I think it will work this time.

I went to the fire station to help with the recruit class. I started by printing the quiz that they are going to get tonight. I also went to the tower to set up the engine and other items for the class tonight. Then I met up with Parrish. We went to station one and helped out with the class.

The class was on water sources and supplies. They had a chance to work on turning off sprinklers, taking hydrants, and setting up stand pipes. But the training went to almost eleven o’clock pm. When it was done Parrish and I went to get some fuel for the Engine.

I went home and watched some more of the videos for ASP.NET.

CISD Team Meeting

We had out CISD meeting this afternoon in Pullman. That made it nice not having to drive to Colfax. We discussed the upcoming training the new members need as well as some organizational things.

I also had my softball playoffs tonight. It sucked because we could not get hits strung together. Defensively we made a lot of errors that we don’t normally make. Kelly’s team beat us and now they are going to play for the championship. Joe, Ryan, and I went to Cougar Country for some dinner.

While there I got a call about playing poker at Jason’s house. Russell was not going to be there. I hope this summer he starts he get-togethers again. I miss those. I went to Jason’s and we played cards for a couple hours. It was a dealers choice day.

I was doing well, but then started to lose at the end on some silly games. I ended up losing about two bucks on the night. I can’t complain for the fun I had. One hand we were playing a game like Indian Poker. I had a Six and Nine. But with that game you don’t know what you have, only what everyone else has. A six-six-nine came on the flop. Beren bet two bucks. I called. Then a nine hit the board. I bet four bucks. Everyone folded really fast. They started to laugh and told me to look at my hand. I bet four bucks because I was trying to get Beren out. He had an Ace. I figured if I could get him out I could split the pot. Instead I crushed everyone. It was funny.

Second Seven In the Morning in a Row

After waking up around one-thirty in the afternoon, I went to my computer to start to write the case report on the coroners case I worked last night. It took a little bit of time to work on the paperwork, answer some incoming phone calls, and keep up with various online conversations, but I finally completed it and E-mailed it to Pete.

When that was finally done I was just doing some stuff around the house until it was time to go to the fire station for the daily rig checks. One of the new guys was there so I made sure he knew how to do the rig checks and let him do most of the work so he knew what to look for.

Brian and I had been talking about CISD’s and the need for them and when one is needed. We also discussed going to Wesson’s retirement party. We made our way up there a little after seven o’clock pm, because dinner should have been done by then. We listened to the funny stories where Wesson was involved.

Finally I got a camera to take some pictures for Dragoo. I went around and snapped about one hundred pics in the next twenty minutes or so. We went back to the station and I had mentioned that it had been quiet. I figured that a call would come out and make people have to leave the retirement party.

When we got the rig back to the station I did my timecard and went home. I was trying to find some information online when we got dispatched to a lady who was assaulted. When we got onscene the ambulance cancelled us. We went back to the station. I went back home and worked some more to find the hoses and connectors I was looking for to use around the house.

That is when another call came in for a car accident. It was one Two-Seventy near mile post eight. A car had read-ended some of the construction rigs. When we pulled up on scene the car was about thirty feet off the road way. I was curious how this happened. Then after looking at the front of the car we could see there were two impact points. The driver had hit the plow blade of this big tractor. The car hit it and it made a deep narrow dent in the car. Then there was a second dent nearly identical to it about eighteen inches away.

From standing at the front of the car you could see where the gravel and dirt mixture had a slight disruption of the color, where the tires had driven across the gravel. You could actually see two sets of tire tracks about eighteen inches apart. It became clear that the car hit the tractor plow blade, then backed up and hit it again.

We went to the hospital to get Zettler who went with the ambulance. As we were leaving the hospital we got called out to a fire alarm at Terrel library, which is the new library next to Holland. They finally named it after about ten years of being called the new library.

When we got on scene we were first there, aside from the WSU cops. We could not see nor smell anything. I thought to myself, that even though on calls like this most of the people go in without SCBA and whatnot, that we should for good measure, but instead we went in like everyone else always does when appears to be a false call.

We talked to the cops and then Engine-thirty-two got onscene, we invited Clint to come in and play. He had the alarm key that allowed us to work the system. We found where the alarm was coming from. It was stairwell “C” on the first floor. We made our way there. When we went into the main room of the library on the first floor across the room I could see some hazy smoke in the air. We got closer and found that indeed it was smoke. Brian checked the door for heat.

Feeling none he opened it up staying low. There was a lot of smoke in the stairwell. We did not want to go into the environment without SCBA. And of course we left it in the rig. So we had to go out and get on air. When we made entry into the stairwell we made notification that we went on air. We went up and down the stairs and could not find the source of the smoke. The stairwell had a door that also lead to the CUB. That door was cracked open because of an extension cord that caused the door to not shut fully. After we made entry I noticed the smoke was not as bad. We allowed the building to naturally vent.

After a few minutes the stairwell was clear enough to reset the alarm. The main library area still had a good haze, but that would go away over some time of the HVAC system running. We had to fill our air bottles. Then went back to the Deuce as the sun was starting to rise. I went home and waited until seven o’clock to go to bed, just like yesterday.

In The Playoffs!

I had a couple guests on the show today to talk about the Outside the Wire movie that was shown by the College Republicans on campus. The “open minded” Democrats and Progressives took up seats in the front row and staged a walk out before the movie was shown. How nice that they actual see what they hate.

We had our softball playoff game. We were playing a team we beat in the regular season. We went out there pretty much easily beat them again. That means that we will be going to round two of the playoffs against Kelly’s team. Ryan said he is going to come down for that game because he wanted to play against Kelly.

I was at home and working on the stats for the team. I also was cruising around the net as well as watching some TV. I finally found my way to bed at three-thirty in the morning. Before I was even deeply sleeping I got a phone call. It was about four in the morning it was Pete. There was a death in Pullman he wanted me to look into.

It appeared to be a natural involving an elderly person. But there were some questions about why there was a delay in contacting us from the time of death. Pete said to let Pullman PD know what was going on. I called Whitcom to let them know what I was doing.

I got on scene and I got a call from Pullman PD. They were going to have to investigate because the person was not in hospice. So I waited for the first officer to show up. It was Heidi. When she got on scene she started to run my truck plate. I heard her over the radio. I looked back and then she said disregard. I also hear the Sgt request Pullman Ambulance show up.

We went to the house and introduced ourselves. We did our investigation. The ambulance showed up. I made sure they did not do anything to the body, like running a strip, like they like to do. They pretty much showed up and left.

I spent the next couple hours getting information and waiting for the detectives to show up. They got on scene around six in the morning. We went to the room to investigate the body and get photographs. I was out of there around seven in the morning. I went home and got a bowl of cereal before going to bed.

Pete was thinking it would be a quick hour or so, but it turned into nearly three hours.

Walker’s Last Day

I had been needing to make a trip to the store for a while now, and I finally made it there. I went to Safeway and spent well over a hundred bucks on the things I needed. Sometimes it is hard to make the time that I need to go to the store, but I finally made sure I got there because I was really getting low on items. Upon my return I made sure that I had time to get to the fire station well before the meal time.

With this being Anthony’s last day, I wanted to have a meal for him that everyone could come to. I had invited the guys from Station one and the Deuce to participate in this. I also had the reserves bring along something to contribute. I got down there early to make sure that everything got set up and it went off smoothly. I helped to get tables set up and we got the chairs out of the shed. I wiped everything down to make sure it was clean.

People started to show up around five and we sat down to eat. It was good to have everyone around. We had BBQ hamburgers and hotdogs with all the fixings. When the meal was done we had some pie then did a quick introduction of everyone at the party.

We went to the bay and started to do our rig checks. They went pretty quick overall. We also spent some time training Williams on Rescue and filling it up with water. We had to go to the city shops to fuel the gas can from Engine. That was pretty much it for the night. We did not get any calls for Walker’s last night.

In the Win Column

Today’s Palouse Thunder game was played against the Okanagon County Commandos. They were missing some of their players because one of their teammates’ child died recently and they were attending a funeral. We had a moment of silence before the game started.

Playing in the Kibbie Dome was nice. I did not have to go far, plus I was able to spread out. It was easier to play the music that I needed to play as the cheerleaders danced and for the Thunder when they scored. The Thunder won the game. It looked bad for a little bit, but the defense stepped up and made some big stops. The offense line is hurting due to some recent injuries. They were playing with some brand new guys on the line.

When the game was over with I went to my house and started to work on going through my books in the garage. I got them all sorted. I am going to put all my academic books on the shelf I have. But the middle bracket bar started to come loose. The plastic molly was not holding. I had to take down all the books until I can get to the store and buy some metal ones.

My garage is coming along. I have a long way to go, but I think when I get the desk and a few other items out of them I will be in good shape. I will be able to move all the items to one side of the garage and start to put things away in the cupboards that are in the garage. Then when I get those things put away, it will make the garage more roomy. I hope that very soon I will be able to get those things put away in the garage. I really have only made a small dent, but it felt good walking through it and feeling like there is more room.

Movie Night with Peter

I spent some of the day working on watching the videos for ASP.NET page development. There are a lot of videos that I have to watch to get caught up and I also downloaded several others to watch. There are several more hours to watch.

Later in the evening I sent a message to Peter about getting together to have some pizza and watch House. He came over for that. He helped me break down a lot of the boxes at my house. We took those to the recycling center at Pullman Disposal.

After House was over we watched Thank You for Smoking. That was a really funny movie. We then spent time talking about some changes for my room and then he was looking at the collage I made for the coroner’s office. He left around five in the morning and I headed to bed.

Training All Day Long

Starting with teaching first aid at the WSU Recycling Center. I wasn’t sure I was going to like to teach it. After doing it with John recently it seemed like first air training was all about saying “Stay calm, I am going to call for EMS.” But through out the class I really realized it was a lot more than that. It was actually a good time teaching it. I had some good students in the class who asked some very good questions.

After that class I went to the Deuce to return the van. Rich got me to play some X-Box for a little while. Then I went home and got my stuff for the Recruit Class. I have spent two days working on it. I was not happy with the results. I felt that I did as good as I could, but the material sucked. The Powerpoint went on and on and on. But finally it was over and we went to the tower.

I worked on teaching positive pressure ventilation. We were up there for a couple hours. I got a call from Mike about a poker game at his place while I was there.

I went to Mike’s and played poker until almost three in the morning. I was kicking some butt. I ended up winning nearly eighty bucks on the night. I was happy about that for sure.

CPR Class at Station One

It has been a little while since I did a class at the station. I had only eight people show up because of cancellations and sicknesses. It turned out to be a good group of students. One guy was ten-six-seven. We talked after the class for a tiny bit. Turns out he is going to become an Eastside Fire and Rescue volunteer. He said that he had been on ride-alongs with Pullman. But he is leaving school so he did not try to sign up for the reserve program, though he had thought about it.

When the class was done and I got everything cleaned up I had to get home pretty quickly because I had to be up early for my first-aid class tomorrow morning, but I also had to get some more work on the class for ventilation that I am doing in the evening.

I have been very busy most of today working on the class material for ventilation or doing the teaching of CPR.

Late for Training

After talking with Brown on Monday my understanding is that training for ventilation would be on Wednesday. But at around one o’clock I got a call asking if I was coming down. I told Howell I would be right down. I was not as ready as I would have liked to have been, but I was able to do an okay job with everything.

After that was done I went home and continued to work on getting the presentation put together with the readings from the book as well as other sources. I also found a couple videos that I was thinking about showing.

Then it was time to go to the CISD in reference to the fatal car accident from Sunday night. That is my third one in less than one year. Honestly I have not had to go to them for myself, but I feel like by being there I am showing support to the others.

When it was over I spoke with Pete for a little bit before heading home. One thing I don’t like about it is when people talk about physical reactions, such as feeling ill, not eating, not sleeping, nightmares, etc, I don’t have those things. But I don’t want to say “it has not affected me at all. In fact, as soon as the call was over, I was done with it.” That just seems cold. I asked him about it. He said something that is important for us as a Coroner is to be able to compartmentalize our calls so we do not get eaten alive by them. People who cannot do that do not last long in this line of work.

When I got home it was late I has some cereal and watched some TV, but I was pretty tired and I got to bed around one in the morning.

More Reserve Training

After the longer than expected night I did not have the time to get my prep work done for the recruit academy class. That meant I was going to have to spend the time after my radio show working on that. And speaking of the radio show, I did not have time to do that last night, so I had to get up early in order to have time to get through that.

When I got to the radio station I was not sure what I was going to talk about, but I was able to go on nearly an hour long talk about the WASL, school teaching, WSU’s education department, and more. Then the second hour I talked about the WSU Police Chief stepping down and the fact he is a scapegoat. Following the talk on that I was starting to discuss the Seattle School District claiming that future time orientation and summer break are racist. How laughable. Tom called in and I did a quick recap.

I went home and started in on the reading assignment for class for today. We are going over hose loads and fire streams. I was not doing a PowerPoint presentation, so I was able to sit back and just watch what people were doing. I also had been assigned to respond on Rescue if there was a call. We got one for a roll-over accident, that turned out to be nothing. But when we got to the scene, in the South part of Pullman, there was about two inches of hail on the roadway. It was like it was covered with snow. The hail coming down was a little smaller than a marble.

I did help out with some of the hands on stuff. I also did some talking, but it was mainly just adding on a point here or there.

The class lasted until almost ten-thirty. When it was over with I went home and started to look at the Ventilation PowerPoint slide show. I am going to be teaching that one on Thursday.

Cutting it Close with Poker

My poker game started at one in the afternoon. I was scrambling to get players. I was nearly ready to cancel when I found I was going to have a fifth player. So I kept it on.

We started to play at one. I was doing alright for myself. I was holding my own not having to rebuy. A couple others had rebought before the final rebuy round. A few people also did add-ons at that point. I went from the chip leader, to someone in the middle of the pack. I did not do a rebuy nor an add-on.

As the day went on we were getting closer and closer to softball time. I gave Ryan some money to go get some pizza because we wanted to eat before the game. He had been busted out by this time and was bored watching golf on TV anyway.

He went off and was gone for a while, I was starting to wonder where he went. Then he came back with some pizza from Pizza Pipeline. At it turned out Little Caesars was closed today. So he had to order and wait for the pizza from Pipeline.

I was eating and trying to play cards at the same time. It was working out okay. But the others started to bleed me a little bit. I wasn’t getting anything to work with and soon my stack started to go fast. The clock was getting close to time to go to softball. As it turned out Dave, Ty, and I were the only ones left. But we all had to be at the field by six for the softball games. Ty played for a different team but he also had the same game times as Dave and I. I started to push on some bad hands because I still needed to get my uniform on.

I finally got busted out. Dave and Ty decided to split the pot between them with some extra going to the person in the chip lead.

We actually got to play two softball games today. Normally we only get one at the most. The first game we kept up with the other team just fine and started to get a lead on them. They would have some innings where they would score some runs, but they were not a great team. We went into the final inning. I got a clutch basehit and I was standing on first. Nick came to the plate and hit a walk-off three-run homerun for the win.

The second game was against a team that had a very bad pitcher. But the guys would not be patient and allow for some walks. No one was getting any hits. In fact when the game was done, as a team, we had four hits. There is no way to win a softball game on four hits. I was pretty mad about the whole thing. Some of the guys were saying softball is a hitters game.

I don’t disagree, you have to be liberal with what you choose to swing at, but when guys are swinging at pitches over their head and popping up all the time, we have to do something. We lost that game because really no one cared to win it.

When that game was done I was heading home so I could get my uniform off and head to the station for rig checks. As I was coming down Terre View from the fields I could see people were leaving the station. I figured that rig checks were done. I called Bien and talked to him. He told me what had transpired on the telephone with Jacob so I could get the full story.

Because rig checks were done I went into the house and got my uniform off. I was sitting at my computer when I head Pullman and D-Twelve get dispatched for a car accident. It went out as Bravo-Injury. But I listened in and I could tell it was worse as time went on. There was one person trapped and barely breathing. As I listened in more, Tyson and Reed were both on IM chatting with me. I heard a call for two more ambulances.

It was fourteen minutes into everything when I got a call from Pete. I knew then what was going on. I was given the message to call Whitcom. I then went in service and went to the scene. As it turned out an elderly lady had been involved and killed by the car accident. When I got on scene I also found out the people in the accident were related to some firefighters. That caused many people at the scene to be more stressed than normal.

I got on scene before the first person was even transported to the hospital. I started to look at the scene and make my impressions of what happened. I photographed the scene and then spoke with Vinny about removal. I was given the greenlight by him. He needed to do his investigation and I did not want to mess up anything he was doing.

I got Kimballs to come out and got the removal done. I spoke with IC and a few of the cops there. Pete had also called me a couple times while I was out there wanting to know what was going on. He decided to come out. He met me at the funeral home. After I had a chance to make my determination of the cause of death, Pete went over it on his own and did the same thing. When it was done he concurred with what I had found and what I said was the cause of death.

By the time that scene was done and the funeral home part was done it was pretty late. I still had to get back and write my report about the rest of the incident and what I had found.

Early Morning Class

Having to wake up early to teach the recruit class was tough after last nights call volume. I also had to do some of the powerpoint. It turned out that I was woken up early for a car accident. I went to the station and no one was around to go on it. So I ended up not going. I got some stand by hours though.

I went home and did some final preps for the class, then it was off to the fire station. I had a quiz that I gave to all the guys. It covered the last few chapters that we had gone over in the book. It was a pretty long, but it only included a couple questions from each chapter. Many of the questions were multiple-parters. It was a great chance to see how people were doing.

Many of them did not do great on the test, but I set it up so they had to do what Grimes use to have people do when they failed a test. They would have to look up the answers in the book and cite the source of the correct answer as well as answering it.

We went to the tower and started to work on all the practical things which was mainly ladders for my guys. It took a while to get people through the stations. It was a good training session.

After training Peter and I got together to watch some movies. We watched Saw Three then Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. It was a great night hanging out with Peter.

No sleep for the tired

This evening I went to My Office to start the night off. It was to get people signed up for the softball team. I was there to help Dave find Brian when he got there. Then I had to head to Colfax for our Coroners meeting. We had been trying to schedule one for several weeks and finally got this one going. We talked about my case earlier last month. We also got the on-call schedule set for the next two months.

After the meeting I got back to Pullman to be on call for the fire department. It was one of those nights where we ran calls most of the night getting very little sleep. I have the recruit class in the morning so I had to make sure I was up in time for that and I knew I would be dragging due to my lack of sleep.

Doing the Second Training Class

I finally got everything in order and I had to sit down and relax for a while. I was wound up and needed to release some of the pent up energy. I watched some Married… With Children. Then I made my way to Station one. I got a call from Blankenstein to cover for him while he is taking a test.

We started the class off and we were in the middle of the PT portion when a call went out. I told Drew to do his Powerpoint first and I would get to my Powerpoint when I got back from the call.

When I got back I was able to do my teaching. I started the video I created from the video clips. A second call came out so I had to leave again. When we got back the video was done and they were doing some of the hands on stuff. I got the training room cleaned up. Then I went out and just mainly hung out while they were doing the hands on stuff.

Following that training I went home and watched Shark before going up and working on the Powerpoints for the Ground Ladders. I spent a couple hours getting data and information for that presentation that I have to do in the morning for the career guys.

Training Class Prep

I went to the fire station around eleven o’clock for getting some training equipment and talking to the training officer. By the time I left it was after three in the afternoon.

Finally I got home and started to work on the videos. I got a lot of videos about forcible entry. I had to boil it all down to just some of the main parts. It took several hours to get all the videos copied onto the computer. Then I spent time getting those videos made into a DVD.

Finally I worked on going through the Powerpoint. I was working on going through all the tools that we have on the rigs and putting the information into the presentation. That way I can let the class know where the items are located on the rigs. It turned out on Monday that the Powerpoints were so close with the book no new information was given out. So I had to add some to talk about.

I pretty much have spent ten hours working on everything over all. When it is all said and done I am going to do actually about twenty to thirty minutes of teaching. But the digitizing of the tapes took a lot of time. If all I had to do was digitize the whole tape rather than bits and pieces it would have been quicker.

First Aid Class

Today I spent working with John to see how he teaches the first aid class. I have not done one in ages so I was getting a refresher. It was a good group of people but as the class went on I got the feeling that all first aid teaches them in this class is to say “I know first aid, relax, I am going to call nine-one-one”. There was some stuff that they did to help, like stopping bleeding, but for the most part it seemed like everything was based on calling EMS.

After the class I went to the meeting for softball. When I got there I learned that I did not need to be there for Co-ed until later this month. But as it turned out no one from My Office went so I registered as being there for My Office.

After that was done I was hanging out at the Deuce so I could talk with Howell about the training class on Thursday. I am going to help with teaching it and I wanted to get to know what items I needed to teach.

Andy Savage in the Morning

For a long time I listened to Andy Savage while I was spending my days in Seattle. He would get me to work every morning. Then there was Jack-FM. A crappy radio station that killed K-Rock and with it Andy Savage. After being off the air for a couple years he is back with an Internet based radio show. It is called bigbuttradio.com. It is a show dedicated to getting people in shape. He worked with a personal trainer and started to get into shape. He was feeling better and decided to work on this show.

I had him on my show today. It was a fun experience. When I was in the studio waiting for my show time, the girl who is on the show in front of mine had never received a caller. I even asked if someone had called in. She said “no”. A few minutes later the phone rang. She lit up, and I was very happy for her. Then after talking for a few seconds it was clear it was not for her. She looked all sad and then handed the phone to me saying “it’s for you.” The other person in the studio and I both had a good laugh over that one. It was Andy Savage on the phone. I was so stoked.

We did the interview on the air. I had him about twenty minutes. It was a lot of fun. Following him I had Jared from the Evergreen Football League on the show. Then I spent time talking about some of the issues that are floating around including the murder over in Moscow.

When the show was done I called the station to find out what the plan was for training. I was told that I was going to do the PPE slides and assist on other parts. I went to the station to get the slides and a book. Then it was off to go home and work on my teaching notes.

I got to the station about fifteen minutes before the training and all my A-Shift guys were there. That made me happy in the face of the E-mail I sent out letting them know my expectation that they were on-time. In fact I said “If you’re on time, you’re late”.

The class took about four and a half hours to do. We spent about half the class working on tying knots. I like to do that and it was a great refresher for me. In a lot of ways I am looking at these classes as refresher for me. I am able to practice some of the basics again.

A Day with Ryno

With Ryan staying the night he was around all day. We started with playing some video games. We played a couple games of Baseball Stars and Tecmo Bowl. I blew him out on Tecmo Bowl and we beat me a couple times in Baseball stars, but I did get him on one game of Baseball Stars.

We had some breakfast and hung out until it was time to get ready to play softball. We had week two scheduled for tonight. Like last week we only got nine players. That sort of made me mad. We ended up only playing one game because a different team did not show up tonight. But there is a chance that the team that had the forfeit with us last week will show up the final week of the season because they were there today.

We won the game by ten-running the other team. That was fun to do. I only got one basehit. Kurt and Jake both had at least one home run, and after two games they both have three homeruns, which is the team record in the current era.

After the game was done Ryan and I went to Cougar Country to get some dinner and I tried to relax but I felt like I had so many things that I had to get accomplished in the next few days I was sort of stressed.

I went to the fire station after dinner for rig checks. Rescue had gone to station one to get some air bottles filled and I helped get the bay washed out and went through the engine with one of the new guys as well as Bien. We were there until a little before eleven o’clock.

I then went home and started work on the stuff for my radio show for tomorrow. I am going to have Andy Savage on the show and I wanted to sound like I knew what I was doing.

Washtunca’s Interesting Announcing Location

When I arrived in Washtunca I found my way to the school pretty quickly. It was worse than I expected. There were only a small number of bleacher seating. Less than what is at the city playfields in Pullman. Because of the way the system is set up, I could not use my laptop and do my job very well. If I hooked my computer to the system, I would have to stay in the concession stand and I would not be able to see the field.

They had a wireless mic that I would use to announce the game. I spent some time trying to figure out where I should go to get a good view of the game and to be able to see what player was involved in the play. Finally after thinking about it for a while I was able to take my truck to the far side of the field and drive it up this grass hillside. Where I was able to sit over the field to a point. I could not really see yard markings, but I could see the players reasonably well. I was still having a hard time seeing them really well.

I sat in the front seat of my truck with the laptop in my lap and my papers all across my dash board of the truck. It made of an interesting day. To play music I would put the mic next to the speaker of the truck and play the CD.

The Thunder ended up losing by less than a touchdown. It sucked because after the first drive or two they could not get anything going. They had bad field position the whole day. The final Thunder drive gave me some hope, but they came up thirteen yards short.

I got back to Pullman and Ryan was in town for the draft for Phil’s fantasy baseball league we are in. Him and I are playing in a team together. Ryan got some pizza and came to my place where he was staying the night. We ate the pizza, watched some House and then the movie Shooting Gallery.

Back in the Clubhouse

Tonight there was the poker game in Newport Shores, and it was in the clubhouse after getting renovated. When I got there a new table was started. Through out the night I was winning. These people are pretty easy to beat. I kept getting decent cards and working on making money.

We played in a tournament later on. I didn’t do great in that. I came in fifth place and they only paid the top four. I sat back at the first table and played some more. I was doing well again. I won back my entry fee from the tournament and continued to expand my money. One guy at the table was really drunk and he is like that every time we play. He gets very annoying when he is like that. But I walked away up around sixty bucks. Pretty good for the night.

My Mom’s Birthday

Today is my mom’s birthday. I got her a card and looked around for something to buy for her but I was not sure what she would want. Jon came over with the boys. They hung out and we played for a while and Jon went to a meeting for their baseball league that is getting started up.

I gave them a ride home after we played some games for a while. Jon got there a little while after I got to the house. I sent the boys to bed and then Jon and I talked softball for a while. He is thinking about playing again. He bought himself a softball bat. He is looking forward to playing.

Firearms and OC Training

The morning started when we went to the Renton Fish and Game Club for firearms training. We used the AR-Fifteen and the Glock Model Twenty-Two. We got a run down of how the guns works and got a chance to put a couple magazines through them both. It was good training. I was doing pretty well with the shooting.

When we were done we went to the PD and did some OC training. I only had to do a refresher course. I helped the one guy who had to get sprayed. He did not like it at all. He took a while to decontaminate.

When he was done I went to work at NU. There is not a lot going on right now because our product is getting ready to be shipped.

Seattle Time

I got up this morning and made my way to Bellevue. When I got to the office I got working on some stuff on my computer when someone asked if I wanted to go get lunch. We went off to lunch. I was at the office until around five. I went home and got a chance to see my family when I got home.

Magic Show in Todd Aud

This morning was my radio show. Daniel from the College Republicans. They did a demonstration on the CUB Mall about having English as the official language of America. We talked about it for over an hour. I finally figured out what was going on with the telephone not working correctly. I figured out that there is a button on the Mic slider where I have to turn on the Tel button. It was a good conversation.

After the radio show I went home and waited until it was time to go to the Magic Show in Todd Aud. It was Brian Bushwood. He is a younger guy and he had an assistant who was a big time ten-six-seven. After the show was done I went up and talked to both of them. I also got them added to MySpace.

During the radio show Bushwood showed some tricks about how you can win at different events. He was doing one for Simon Says. When I was one of the guys who was still in play, he said for everyone to come to the stage to continue the game. I didn’t want to go to the stage so I just stood there. Everyone else went walking up there. Then he said “Simon did not say”. I sort of laughed because the only reason I did not go up there was because I didn’t want to go up there at all.

Softball Season has Started!

We first had a poker tournament. There were nine people who showed up for it. It lasted a couple hours. I was doing pretty well through out the tournament. Dan had to rebuy one time, and he kept getting sucked out on. When we were getting to the end of the tournament Andy had to leave so he was playing very loose. He was going all in on several hands. There were only three of us left. Andy called all-in and I called him. The flop was his cards. I had him dominated up until the flop. Once he took me out he had to go, so he got second place. Richie got first place.

I ran over to Moscow to get some softball pants. I left mine in Renton. But when I got to Moscow I went to four places and did not find them anywhere. Tri-state and WalMart did not have any at all. Big-Five had some, but they were all small. Sport Shack in the mall did not have anything but basketball shorts. It was terrible. I ended up using the old Cougar Men’s Baseball pants I bought to play on Kelly’s team with.

I got to the field with Ryan. We ended up having the first team not show up. So we sat around for an hour. We did some BP which was good. I was playing first base and Ryan was at second. With Bryce gone there was a shake up of the infield. In the second game I had to make some plays. One was a dive as the ball was getting ready to go out of play. I had to dive right on the first baseline’s out of bounds marker. I saved it from going out.

Then there was another play where I had to go hard to my right, more or less a dive and scoop a ball. When I came up with it I looked down at home where someone was running, but I did not think I would be able to make the play, so I held on it the ball. We were playing A Bunch of Old Guys, which use to be Don’t Care. We lost to them by three runs. It sucked.

After the game was done I went home to work on the radio show as well as getting the Website updated for the Nadirs. It was a pretty good day over all.

Just Some Drive Time

I got a phone call from Pete to start my day. Instead of going to back to sleep I got up and went to the training tower. No one was there. So I went to the fire station and talked to Chapman. He was doing a rig check on the ambulance. I got some drive time set up with my guys.

I got some lunch and then went back to the station. I helped finish the rig check while waiting for Morgan and Jake to get there. I got a phone call from the family of the deceased I worked with yesterday. I told him what we were doing and what the latest information that I had.

We went out for a couple hours. Morgan is new at driving and he is still getting use to driving. Jake did really well. He doesn’t really know the city very well so he needs to learn the city. But he drove the rig well.

When we were done I went to the store to get some shopping done. I have been needing to do it for a few days. While shopping Volk called and told me the ambulance was dirty and I should have washed it. I told him I could wash it if he would like. He said he would. I was sort of pissed because they have left our rigs dirty.

When I got home I made some dinner and watched TV for a couple hours. I made my way to the station around eleven at night. I washed the ambulance. Just as I was finishing up the tones went off. But only the PL had to go. I don’t know if the ambulance had to go out on a call or not.

Incredibly Busy Day

Today started out with a Delta and Echo response at the same time. I went down and I went on Rescue. It was about seven-thirty in the morning. We were going to go to the Echo, but we were told to go to the Delta. The Echo was cleared quickly, so I knew what that meant.

After the Delta we got an Alpha. We were first on scene and it really was just a public assist. When I was leaving I had a call from Pete about the death in Pullman. He was going to take it, but I told him I was the one on call. So I went home and got into my coroners uniform and went to the scene. I was on scene for a couple hours getting information and then I went to the funeral home and got more information. Due to the information I got from the family it was not clear whether it was an accidental or a natural event. I spent some time talking to Pete. We were going to meet up later on and go over everything.

I got back to my place and worked on the paperwork. It took some time to write the stuff up, count the meds, and contact the doctors. I got done with that and went back to the funeral home to meet Pete. We went over my findings and talked about what I found. He said that he agreed an autopsy was going to be needed. He scheduled that.

I had just enough time to get home, change, and get to the fire station. Erik called and said we needed to take Rescue to work the WSU Baseball game. It was against the Huskies. There were more than three-thousand people. It was one of the ten biggest crowds ever. We were there working that for a couple hours when we got a call for a power line down. Tyson and I went on that leaving Brian at the game, in the tenth inning. It turned out the Cougs lost in the eleventh.

On the power line down call I took command. I cleared the other units. We stood by incase a fire broke out because the live wire. A couple WSU cops were there and we spent the next couple hours talking and making jokes. We were on scene for four hours waiting for Avista and to be cleared. I got my report written.

I got my report done. I got home and made a sandwich. Then we got a call. The next couple hours we got a couple more calls. It was so tiring. I finally got to go to bed about four in the morning. It was nearly a twenty hour day on the clock. I was so tired by the end of the day.

A Full Schedule

After getting to bed so late I was not awake until just after ten o’clock. I was supposed to have a flooring estimate. But either the guy did not show up, or he rang the doorbell and left. Either way he did not leave a card nor call me up.

I spoke to Nick about softball. It turns out his team did not get created so he will be playing on my team and bring a guy along with him. That is good news for us. Neither of the two guys from the free agent I e-mailed about playing on the team got back to me.

I was supposed to have a managers meeting today for the team I also had plans to do drive time with the guys. So I got someone else to do the managers meeting. I got together with Tyson, Andrew, and Morgan. We did a lot of stuff with driving around the cones and practiced doing some of the things they would have to do in the cone course.

I also hit the WSU Surplus auction today. I saw Kelly and Matt there. Matt is the one who reminds me of Brandon. He is a ten-six-seven and a very nice guy. He plays shortstop and does a very good job at it. They were getting pants for the softball team. They had a lot of old WSU baseball pants. They all got some and Kelly told me to get some if I was going to play in some of their tournaments. I picked up some pants and socks. There were some file cabinets but I did not get one. They are going to be expensive, but they are better and cheaper than those at Office Depot and Staples.

Poker with Langely

Everything was going well until I got a message asking me if I had heard about what was going on with the ASP.NET applications. For some reason something was discovered and it was causing the GFE and all ASP.NET applications to stop working. That was bad. I spent a lot of time with Brian today trying to figure out what was happening and how to fix it. In fact I spent most of my day doing that. But I had to get to the fire station to do rig checks and get ready for being on shift.

I was at the station for a while. We were hanging out down there chatting about random things, like normal, until around eight o’clock pm. I was at home with Loren got a hold of me to invite me to come over and play some poker. Several other guys from the football team came over. They were not great players, it looks like they just played for the fun of it, but they threw around money. I ended up winning about twenty-five bucks on the night.

It was midnight when I got to Russell’s for our Wednesday night get together. I got dished up some chicken and rice. The tones went off for a call. I was able to eat the food and I was heading to the station. By the time we were done with that call I went back to Russells. This time I was there some time longer, but before I was able to really get relaxed we got toned out for something else. I was off to the races again, but it was getting near two in the morning, and by the time the call would be done it was going to be late. Top that with the problems with the stuff at work I told them I would not be able to make it back.

Softball Signups!

Getting up this early, I had to get to the rec center to sign up for the softball team. I was the first one in the Men’s Comp on Sunday nights. It is not like it use to be when there was a line down the hall of the CUB with people waiting to get a team. Now you can show up hours after the sign ups start and still get your team.

My schedule showed a Coroner’s meeting as well as a meeting to get signed up for teaching recruit classes. That meeting started at one o’clock pm. I got to the station just in time for the meeting to start. It lasted about an hour talking about the schedule of the academy as well as getting people signed up for it.

I was at home working on some stuff there before heading to Colfax for the Coroner’s training. I stopped by the fire department in Colfax to let them know I would not be there for training because I was going to the coroners meeting. I also had Ken’s pocket knife and returned it to him. He gave me a lot of crap, in jest, but it was fun.

I went to the coroners meeting and no one show up. After a while I called Pete and there was no meeting tonight. So I went to the Colfax Fire training. I was a little late but I was able to be there for most of the training. We were doing stuff with setting up Command.

Pushed back a week

I started with a bug on my plate this morning. I got it quickly fixed and turned in. Then it was time to head to my radio show.

My radio show went really well today. I did some good stuff. I had several topics that I touched on and when I was listening to the audio I thought I sounded good. Better than normal.

I got back to the house in time for the meeting. When I got there I found a second bug. I worked my rear off trying to get it completed today. As it was they moved back release to web by one week for testing purposes. So if it took me extra time to finish my bug we might have to push it back even more. I finally ran down the problem to something I was told to do earlier. I got permission to revert my changes and got it checked in.

We had the Reserve Association meeting today. Things went pretty well, but there were a couple people doing some scare tactics about the career guys getting us fired over it. I thought that was crap that it was even brought up because that is so far from the truth.

But over all people do want to have it, so I am going to do more work to get it figured out and have something.

We had our OTEP training as well as a couple calls, but it was quiet after around eleven o’clock. In fact we never even got out of the vehicle on either call, both of which were fire alarms.

Batting Practice

I was tired this morning, but I got up and made a call to schedule the ambulance for drive time. I set it up to happen after I had batting practice.

I went to the bat lab where Joe works. I got a chance to hit about one-hundred-thirty-five balls. It was a good times. My first swing was a whiff. But after that I had some nice pokes. But not as many I may have liked.

When that was done a couple of us went out in the medic for drive time. We spent about two hours on the road. When I was done with the drive time I went home. I pretty much hung out there for the evening. I worked on the foam board project some more.

I was able to sell one of my items that I have on craigslist. I have a couple more things for sale. I am selling it all cheap, but it is more than if I had given it away like I did some of the other stuff.