Busy Day and Quiet Night

Most of the day today at the fire department was spent running calls. We didn’t have a lot of downtime between all the calls we were running. But after the four calls we received at this station everything went dormant.

The afternoon melted into dinner then that melted into the evening which melted into bedtime.

My New Durango

After I got off work I went to Lewiston to pick up my new Durango. I worked on getting the things transferred over to it. It has leather in all three rows. That was nice to see, because I only negotiated the first two rows. It must have cost less to do all three than they thought it was going to cost to do the first two rows.

I have lifetime powertrain and bumper-to-bumper warranties. It has a DVD player built into the radio. I have a rearview camera and backup sensors. It has the Hemi with MDS so it shuts down some of the cylinders when they are not needed to help save fuel. It seems to have some get-up and go. It feel great to drive it. Plus it has the newer traction control system so I feel better about driving it on the bad roadways.

When comparing my Ought-Seven vs Ought-Four it was night and day. My rig has traction like the Ought-Seven. The Ought-Seven was one I would try to put sideways on the snow covered roads and soon as it started to move sideways it would straighten out. I was easily about to put the Ought-Four sideways. I didn’t like that in terms of safety.

It looks very nice. I also have the navigation system installed. I have a huge hard drive so I can input songs and play straight from my hard drive. It also have satellite radio. I have enough space to put all my music on the hard drive.

I decided that I would find an application to update the ID3 information on all the songs. Then I am going to go through and clean the directory. I am going to work on properly naming all the songs and fixing the errors in naming of the songs. I am going to get rid of all the duplicate songs as well. I expect this project to take many hours.

After getting the rig I went to Costco to get some groceries. I hadn’t been to Costco in a long time. But I was able to get several things that I needed including paper plates, a push broom, and a sixteen gig thumb drive. I spent nearly four-hundred bucks in all.

Nathan came over and we watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith. We were not able to watch the whole thing because he had to go to a meeting, but we were going to get together after his meeting.

My softball games that were planned for the afternoon were cancelled so I didn’t have to worry about those.

A call came in for a transfer to Spokane. I decided to take the call. I went to Spokane with Blake. It was an ALS transfer. Following that call I went home to continue to working on my music. I ended up staying up until nearly two in the morning.

Old Fire Photos

Other than our normal things at the fire station, we didn’t have a single call all day. We pretty much left to go to EMS rounds. We also went to get dinner. But other than that there was nothing going on there.

We did a couple inspections in the afternoon but that didn’t take up a lot of time. Then I spent the rest of the work day helping Rich go through a bunch of old fire investigation reports. I was pulling out photos of interest to work on scanning them.

I have a box full of them. It will be my project to work on during the days where we have time to work on projects. I hope to get through one case a day. If it is a smaller one I can get through more than one. I am going to put them onto the website under the department activities.

Five Hour Airport Transfer

I got about four hours of sleep and I made my way for my ride along this morning. I was told to get the reserve car ready and fill it with fuel. I was ready to go but told that due to the fact I worked last night and only got four hours of sleep I couldn’t work this morning due to safety reasons. I was disappointed. But I went home and went to sleep for a while.

I was sitting at home when a call for a transfer went out. I came to the station to go on it. We ended up never leaving the hospital. I did some CPR while at the hospital and instead of driving to Spokane I drove to the airport with a the Medstar crew. It was almost six hours of being there when it was all said and done, never making it to Spokane. But the nurses were very happy with the work we did there and wanted to give us an atta boy to the Chief.

I then spent about an hour talking to Nathan on the phone and chatting with Jon on IM.

Mike Knows My Mo Friend

With the transfer to Spokane I started in the wee hours of the morning I was running later than I wanted to be. We had dinner at Frank’s on the way out of Spokane. Then it was back to the fire station. I cleaned up and went to my house to change into my street clothes.

I went to Phil’s house for the draft. That lasted nearly five and a half hours for me. I ordered pizza for the whole group. We got five large pizzas. I was drafting my team. As always I was working on getting players I hadn’t heard of. But I also picked up some of the players who I knew, but are not great for fantasy baseball. Players like Griffey are fun to have, but they will not get me a lot of points.

I had to leave with enough time to run to my house and put my fire department uniform back on to go to the Deuce. I was taking Engine Thirty-One to Smith Gym for the Family Fun Fair. We were there to show some of the equipment to the kids. We also got dinner out of the deal. I had a couple reserves go up with me.

When we completed that I had to rush back and wash the vehicle. Then I went home to change into my county uniform. I was working with Mike. I called him up as I was leaving because I was running late getting to the SO because of the previous event.

We got on the road after he finished up some of his DUI videos. Then we hit the road. The weather sucked. We got called to Endicott for a person who said that a friend was going to hurt himself. After clearing that call as unfounded we went to dinner at Zips.

We then headed over to Pullman. We ran some traffic out on the Pullman-Moscow Highway. While out there I heard EMS get dispatched to the same address we were at earlier in Endicott. We didn’t respond because the snow was really bad and there were people closer than us.

We made our way to Colfax as we were called out on a Nine-One-One hang up. En Route we talked to the residents and got information that there wasn’t a problem. We stayed in Colfax for a while running traffic. We made a lot of stops. One stop was of a couple guys who use to have a radio show after my show.

Mike and I talked about how it seems in some ways that things are not as busy as they use to be. I talked about how Pullman PD would be dispatched on at least one beeper call each weekend night. Now it seems much more rare. They have tons of noise complaints and whatnot though. I was talking to Mike about a friend of mine who is a deputy that I met while in Stephenson together. We worked in the jail and he was at one time a reserve.

Mike told me about how that guy probably doesn’t like Mike at all because when they were in the academy together Mike outed my friend to many of his co-workers one night while in a bar together. He said he feels really bad about it and wanted him to know he is sorry.

I asked how he knew, and he said that he has a good friend who is gay. He said that he can tell based on “gay radar”.

At the end of the night I got my paperwork completed and went home. It was about four in the morning when I went to sleep and that capped off my twenty-four hours without sleeping.

Two Late Transfers

I was working the fire department today. We had a call for a fire alarm today. We found some contraband. We were not going to do anything about it. But then there were some other issues. We contacted the prevention officer who said to call it in. We called it in, but someone snuck inside and removed the items before the cops got permission to enter.

We had training this afternoon and then got called away for a call. But the training was pretty much done before we got called away. In the evening I was the third in engine instead of being on the ambulance like I started out on.

As the night went on, I went to bed around eleven. I got woken up several times to do transfers. The first was to Colfax. I was the attendant on that call. Later on I did a transfer to Spokane. That sucked because I would only get three hours of sleep on the night.

Long Tiring Day

I was pretty tired a lot of the day today at the fire department. Having stayed up pretty late last night was keeping up with me. I was trying to keep myself active. That wasn’t too hard. We one had one call during the day. It was for a fire alarm. We cleared that just as it was turning into lunch time.

I spent most of the day getting work done on the computer. I wanted to make a web application where I could enter data that I have to type up for tickets. That would be saved into a database. This could be done while in the car or at the station. Then it will take that data and print off all the reports without having to type them up later on. It would take the few pieces of data I wrote up and it would merge it into a Word template. The nice thing is that I would have to save separate Word docs. It would all be in the database so if I did need a copy of it, I could have it reprint it.

It took some time to write it up and find the necessary resources on the web, but I was able to find it. I don’t have it polished, but I have proof that it will work like I hope. So now I just have to do the work to make it nice and save the data to the database, etc.

I had to stay up until midnight to sign my softball team up for this coming IM season. For the first time in, probably a decade, my team will be playing on a night other than a Sunday night. We are going to do Thursday night so I can make all the games.

Spring Break Slows Work at PFD

I have been dealing with the engineer issue about me not being able to stay under the reserve guidelines. Brown and I talked about it for a while. He pretty much said that he knew that by setting the standards and not dealing with a couple of us who are engineers under the old system that we would get hosed. That is what happened. He said it sucks, but that is the way it is.

We got dispatched to a structure fire that turned out to be a cooking problem. It was burnt food, but it smoked up the apartment to the point where we had to ventilate it. While doing that I got an ambulance run. Our turn out smelled like the burnt eggs from the structure fire call it was nasty.

Later in the evening we got called to a fire alarm at the Child Care Center. The night janitor was not there. We cleared the alarm which turned out to be nothing. But we spent a while looking for the guy. We never were able to find him. We cleared it after being there for about an hour and went to bed.

One Big Call

I was pretty upset about the engineer thing. I wrote a blog entry about it to help get rid of some of my issues. I had to vent, but I feel like I cannot trust anyone at the fire department to say anything to. I believe that no matter who I talk to the information will get passed around at some point and I don’t want that. So I will just keep it to myself. Brown wants me to continue to do my engineer stuff and get it done. He said he will make sure my captain will work with me to get it done. I have no interest though.

I was sleeping when I heard the pager go off with a call for a shooting. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Sure enough there was a shooting at Providence Court. According to the press release the guy was shot with a shotgun. But the press release said that he was going to be okay. It was my first shooting call.

Peeved Yet Again

It is days like today that make me not want to work as a career firefighter. There is so many politics. Plus people who think that if they got shafted, it is only fair if everyone else gets shafted down the line. For example. If one person has to wait for a year to be eligible to do something, then everyone who comes after that person should have to wait. Rather than going with the flow and the changes in time, people will whine if it appears that someone else is getting off easier or gets into a better situation. It is crazy.

In the case for me now there has been a battle with me being an engineer. At first I was one. But then they took it away. But they say I will be an engineer again if I become a reserve. They talk about integrity of the program between the engineers system and both career and reserves, yet today I am being told I am good enough to be a reserve engineer, but not a career engineer when I actually have more training than a lot of the current career engineers. I was granted an exception recently due to the fact that as a temp the captains are not interested in getting me trained on the PL. So becoming an engineer is nearly impossible. But now that has been taken away because some people whined about it. I had to do X so, he should have to do X. It is a bunch of crap.

Later on I am sitting in the training room. The Lt from the other station comes down and I hear him call my name. I thought he wanted something computer related because I am always doing computer stuff for him. Instead he wanted me to make coffee because I am the lowest on the pole. That just royally pissed me off. It was in a public manor meant to outright embarrass me. Then the senior FF from that station started to speak up. I couldn’t care less to hear from him. He pissed me off when I bought everyone dinner and he complained about the selection. Plus he has a problem with me because I am not union.

So I walked in to make his coffee. I then walked down the hallway without saying anything and tried to relax. I was boiling. As I sat there I heard them call me into training.

I sort of feel like being too busy making coffee in the future to be able to help with computer problems. I feel like I may be too busy in the future to help out with other things.

I have struggled over the engineer stuff in the past, and I have felt like screw it I am not going to work on it. Then I have felt like screw THEM I am going to find a way to get it done with or without their help.

I really feel like I should say screw it and wait until I become a reserve again. I am tired of the crap. I am tired of dealing with it. I am going to be fulltime for almost a year before something comes of this, and if I get hired on, then I will have a whole nother year to put up with it. That is why I don’t feel like I want to take it.

Paybacks

Today I was repaying a twenty-four hour trade with Blake. I got to the station and was put onto the ambulance. We ran several calls through out the day, but once dinner rolled around we were nice a quiet. We made a nice dinner, taco salad.

I was tired from being up late and getting up early the last couple days that it was nice to get to bed sort of early. I was still up until nearly eleven.

Running our Rears Off

I was on the ambulance today and we were running our rear’s off. We were going from call to call at times. We left the station and didn’t come back for hours. I had enough time to eat, but not anytime to sit around. Then in the evening we had dinner. Reserve training was coming up. I helped Brown with that on explaining how to set up the four-lead and twelve-lead as well as couple other things before we went to put the chains back on the ambulance.

It was snowing most of the day, but in the afternoon there was a break and the main roads cleared. We had to make a trip to Palouse. We stopped along the way to pull off the chains. But with the bad weather it was time to put them on. Just as we finished we got called out to a car fire and happened on a car accident. The car accident was non-injury. When I was getting in the ambulance I fell on my back. It didn’t hurt anything, but my pride.

Just Doing Whatever

This morning after getting off work I spent time at the fire station waiting for training to start. We were going a critique of one of our recent fires. I spent time working on writing down the stuff on white board to be used during the critique. The critique lasted about two hours.

When it was over I was going to VanNess’ house to help him with some computer problems he has with his desktop. There are some major problems with it that need to be fixed. I spent a while there and then headed home after starting SpyBot on a search. It was taking a couple hours to do that. Then we walked through setting on a search of the system using Microsoft’s live search web application. That ran all night long.

Later in the evening I was watching some TV while surfing the web. I got a chance to head to the station on some callback when they got busy for a little while, but that was about it.

Snow Day

Today was a snow day and it has been a while since it last snowed. That made it so people forgot how to drive in the snow. We started the day by going on car accidents. We ended up rolling on about four or five wrecks on top of our other EMS calls. We also got into a fire alarm in the middle of the morning.

I help Wehrung with some stuff on the critique that is happening tomorrow. I also took my engineer test. I missed four and that is the best score of everyone. But of them there is one that I missed that I am mad about missing because it has to do with an engineer calculation. We are not given the constants sheet that we would normally have access to, so I made a simple error. That cost me that question. I argued the point a lot, but it was all for nothing. I am not getting that point.

We ran almost eleven calls through out the day and evening. It was a pretty quiet night though.

Home Designing

This morning was spent running on a couple ambulance calls. We started at about three in the morning and I didn’t get back to bed for very long before the second one. We had a car accident to end off the day. I sort of had patient care on one of them.

Following work I started in on my computer. I installed the Home Designer Pro application from Chief Architect. It was pretty spendy, but it should help me design stuff. I then started to build stuff. There was a couple things I had to look up to start, but it was pretty easy to just get going on. I watched a couple videos to get me underway.

I am designing the shop with a second floor, a bar and poker room, as well as a big garage, office, shop, and small apartment while the house itself is built. I worked on that most of the day and into the evening.

Outside of that I didn’t do a whole bunch. I went to the fire station to get my pizza that I forgot. That was about the extent of the day.

Pizza Day

This morning I was tried due to staying up late for playing poker. But I got up in time for class. I got cleaned up and then went to Dissmore’s and got some donuts for the class. Today was the final day for Radar. Plus we had CPR and first aid training.

We did the first-aid training in the morning. It was what I expected. At lunch Jessie, Michael, and I went Subway. Then back to class for doing the radar estimation training. We went to One-Ninety-Five. We watched cars and estimated their speeds. Then we would use the radar to see what the speed was. We spent about thirty total minutes on that.

We went back to class and did the CPR portion of the class. That went pretty quick. We did some practice and called it a day.

I went home to change and then to Papa Murphy’s for some pizza. I was buying for everyone on the shift. I got pepperoni and a cinnamon wheel.

I cooked it up and shared with everyone. I helped to do the clean up as well. It was a pretty slow day overall. I got some projects finished that I had been working on. Including updating the phone list and speed dials. Plus I also got some Powerpoints completed for the upcoming meeting for the new facility.

Late Night Poker Party

I went down to the station after I got off work in order to meet with the sub-committee for the new facility committee. We outlined out a plan of action for the upcoming meeting. We are going to put together a Powerpoint presentation to help us get through all the items we need to cover.

During the meeting Gollnick called and asked if I wanted to play poker. I told him that I did. So we set up a game for the evening hours. Because of when John would be done going to the school fair with the kids he wanted to start around eight-thirty.

I invited others to come over as well. We had a little game that lasted for several hours. It was about two-thirty in the morning when the game finally broke. Chiavaras came over. Over the last year John, Chia, and I are always bantering about him playing poker with us. Every time we would have a game we was unavailable to play with us. Tonight was the first time he was able to play.

I ended up losing a couple bucks along the way, but John brought some beer and Chia brought pizza. I was able to chow on pizza and have a couple beers in place of the money I lost.

Radar Class Day Two

Most of the day we were running on fire alarms. Outside of that I was working on a couple projects as assigned by the chief. Actually it was just updating the phonelist with the latest reserves.

Following that I went to Colfax for Radar class for the reserves. We are almost done. It has been a long road. We are down to about six classes. We are so close to getting out on the road, I am very excited.

At the end of the class we had our written test and now all we have left for tests is EVOC and the final.

Video Editing

I went to the fire station today to talk with Reiber about Pat’s land I looked at yesterday. He pointed out a couple things to me about the property and what it is worth and some other information about living out in those parts.

Before I left we had some call-back. I stuck around for that. Then I went to Safeway to do some shopping. I got a lot of groceries. I took some ice cream back to the station because of my photo being in the newspaper for the Town Crier.

Later on I went home and started to work on my video. I went through a lot of the videos decided what clips I wanted to use. Then I started clip the videos and started to get them put together.

Land for Sale

I went to a place out on SR One-Ninety-Four to look at twenty-eight acres of land. There is an eight acre parcel of land where I could put the home. Some of the roadway to it is already completed. The land would cost a little over four grand per acre.

It has some pasture land. There is a seasonal stream that runs through it. It sounds like through out the winter it has water running in a part of it. There is a one-hundred yard shooting range already set up. There is some good areas to build a house. So it is a possibility for purchase. The owner may be willing to do owner financing. That would be huge. We may not be able to get close enough on price though. That is yet to be seen however.

I am going to have to start to research what it would cost to do some excavation work on the home site, the road way, the crossing of the stream, and more. If it is going to cost a ton of money to get it usable I may have to look elsewhere.

While I was on the property I was walking it when I heard Pullman get dispatched on a call. That also meant I could hear the pager at the top of the hill. That made me feel better about that part.

After I heard a second call go out I figured they would do a call-back. They did. So I cut my visit a little short as I made my way back to my rig to get to the station.

But before the night was done I ended up getting in on a transfer to Spokane. I was the attendant for the trip up to Spokane. We got pizza for dinner. Then made our way back. I worked with Paul. He is a very nice person. We have been on the same shift for a while. I think we got along fine, but I don’t know if he actually liked me or not.

On the way back we talked a fair amount, but there was some silence along the way as well. It sometimes seemed strained to chat. When the night was done, I still got called in for call-back. So I ended up doing just over ten hours of overtime today.

Close to Being an Engineer… Again

I spent some of the day doing some engine driving on Engine Thirty-Two. On top of that I got cleared to become an engineer without having to finish off the PL drive time first. That is something important to me. I was in a situation that I couldn’t get the drive time as easy as I would have liked because of my temp status. With the the recent development I can become an engineer on my own schedule and then work on the PL as I have been. This will stop holding me back.

I went to the county and had the coroner’s meeting to start with. But I didn’t get a chance to talk to Pete about the things I was hoping to speak to him about. Specifically about the fact that I want to be the next Whitman County Coroner. But I want to make sure things are still on track for that. I want to keep the actual conversation on the down low so I didn’t want other around for what we talked about.

Today’s class was radar. It is day one of three for radar. Today it was just background and lecture. Next time we will cover more on the radar itself, and then in two Saturday’s we will do some practical stuff.

NRC Tour

I went on a tour of the NRC with the fire department today. They have the reaction going. It is so cool looking. The color that it produces is incredible. I have said that before and I was excited to see it again.

In the evening I did a transfer to Spokane with Chelsey. It was a simple transfer. We went to Outback for dinner when we were up there.

The Cougs Couged-It

This morning I got working on my laundry and I was going to wash my car, but due to doing a repair on my hose I couldn’t do it. I swept the garage out and made the measurements to build a shelf for the back of the rig to make better use of storage for my rig.

I went to Rich’s house to help him with his computer. There was a problem with the DVD drives not being recognized. I spent some time doing some troubleshooting to find the problem. With some searching online I did find a possible solution. We had some lunch and then I did the solution I found. It worked and I was on my way to the station.

I was working the basketball game. I was excited to both work it and get to see the game. The Cougs unfortunately had a nice lead, but lost it towards the end of the game to lose it. That really sucked. We should have won the game.

Following it the game we went back to the station. I fueled up the rig and went home. It wasn’t long before we were called out for a call-back due to multiple calls going on at once. I went to the station and I was there for almost two hours until enough workers were back in service to bring the numbers up to the minimum staffing levels.

Day Long Hanging Out

I took my rig into the Dodge dealer to get the weather striping replaced on the front doors. I thought it would take an hour or two. It might have if I were waiting there, but just a second alarm was called. I walked to the station and hung out.

The time on the second alarm turned into another hour, and then another. Soon I was having lunch there. Before I knew it, we were only two hours from dinner. I was starting to get antsy. I finally got a phone call from them. I went to get my rig, and I saw that some people have “Wait” next to their name. I think those people get faster service because they are sitting in the waiting room.

Feeling Horrible Still

I am feeling absolutely horrible right now. I am down in the dumps. There would be a good chance that I would quit being a fulltime firefighter right now.

I don’t feel like I fit in on B-Shift at all. I am an outsider for sure. I felt like I was welcomed in on C-shift. That is not really the issue though, it just doesn’t help things.

What really sucks is the fact that I have served this city for nearly ten years as a reserve firefighter and it means squat to everyone. I am treated like I just joined Pullman Fire for the first time ever.

I was an engineer, but when I became a temp all of a sudden I am no longer an engineer. I have to do more things. But I bet if I were to go back to being a reserve they would say I am an engineer again. It is just stupid. They want to do things a certain way, but then they make exceptions for some, but not for others. I would have to point out the asinine nature of saying I am good enough to be an engineer on July first, but not July second.

I need only a little bit of drive time on some of the rigs, but it is hard to get being the temp. Captains usually want to focus on their full-time guys, not me. So I will be set aside in favor of the career guys. So I am lingering not being an engineer.

After yesterday I was hoping today would be different. I started off okay. I was getting my work done and all was well. I asked the engineer for today about doing some of the practical stuff with the ladder truck for the time I need in order to get checked off. As I was in the process of doing it, the captain came out and said he wanted a different guy to do it. That just totally angered me and made me feel like I am done with this.

So many things seem to be piling up on me right now. In some ways I just want to tell the chief thanks for the chance, I enjoyed many aspects of being fulltime, but there were some issues I was just unable to deal with. I have been doing this for nearly seven months. If I was only five months from being off probation that would be nice, but I would still have twelve months from the time of hire to be on probation. Seven months has been too much, another year is just horrible.

It makes me feel like I have two options at this point, just say “screw it.” Do my own thing and just don’t give a rip about anything else and do my job as required, but not play with other peoples’ games. Or play the games and have a better chance of “fitting in” with everyone should I get hired and make it off probation.

I want to just get my engineer stuff done under their nose. They are not going to help me do it. I have to go out and do it on my own. I am going to have to find time with Brown to get it done while on duty that way I can be done with it and not have to try to rely on the captains who have priorities that are different from mine.

Feeling Horrible at Times

Today started out like most other days. I woke up at the fire station. I got ready to start the day. I went to the dayroom and did the dishes, made coffee, and got the newspaper. I was watching some TV. While watching a TV show, Tom and Jerry, a young guy who has been on the department about a year and a half walked out and said “we are not watching cartoons.” He then took the changer from me and turned it to the news.

It just makes me so mad being in the situation where I have been on the fire department for nearly 10 years, but because I was a reserve it means nothing to anyone. So as far as they are concerned I am a lowly, lowly, worthless guy. I just want to say something but I have to play the game. But it is a game I think is stupid. It is like high school all over again. I like the job, but I don’t always like the side effects of having it. There are some ways I would rather be a reserve. At least there I meant something to the guys I worked with there. I actually felt like I sometimes had a voice and could speak up.

I have found some of the guys I work with are so anti-reserve it is sad to me. I have seen one guy who refused to shake the hand of any of the new reserves who were trying to introduce themselves. I think that is a bunch of crap. Most of the full-timers do not count reserves when talking about responses and number of firefighters who will be coming to the scene during a response. It makes me feel like they have zero appreciation for the reserves and the work they do. I make it a point to thank the reserves for their help after every call. I want them to know I appreciate them.

So I am a little bit in a bad mood to start off with, as can be seen above. Then I got to the Sheriff’s Office. They had decided to start the class at eight o’clock today instead of nine, but it was never totally understood by everyone. So many of the guys got there around eight-thirty. I got there at eight-thirty because of work. I lead the group to the basement of the jail. I then went to the report writing room to see if our instructor was there. He started to chew me out for being late. It was in front of some of the other cops and my classmates who were there at eight. I told him I worked until eight and I got there when I could. He then said that he knew. That also didn’t help how I was feeling.

We went to the basement and he torn into the others a little bit. When they left the room one guy said that someone should have found out for sure if we were supposed to be there at eight. Someone else said “the president”. I knew I should have. Everyone else knew I should have. I failed. That also made me feel worse.

I did my first scene and I worked with a guy who is a very nice guy, but he tends to be very naive. His performance in the scene wasn’t the greatest and it hindered us overall. We ended up doing what we needed to, in other words we made the arrest, but it took way too long and there were some officer safety issues that he had.

I went back into the room with everyone else and I was not happy. I sat there without talking for a little while. Finally I started to feel a little better and then moved along.

But when we went to lunch I had no desire to eat with everyone else. Jessie and I went to Rosauers. As it turned out everyone else had gone there. I put my cup of pop on a table by itself. One of the guys in the class said I could sit at the table with him and one other guy. I thought about it for a second and then I went and got my pop and joined them.

After lunch I went to do my next scene. I did okay, but there was some miscommunication about where we were. It was outside the jail, but they didn’t mean to have the scene to have a jail near it. I wasn’t told that. So in my mind we were near the jail and I acted as such. That caused me to go down a path they didn’t think we should be going down.

I then did my next scene and I didn’t do that great, but I didn’t get killed either so it could have gone worse.

While in the room after my two scene’s I was starting to get my partner from the first scene a hard time. I have been doing that since two Saturday’s ago. I have been unhappy with him since two weeks ago. He called me by my first name, which I had never introduced myself to him as. I have always been Scotty to him, but for some reason he didn’t call me that. It just set me off. So he has been going through my wrath.

It is very unfair of me. He is a very nice guy, and I shouldn’t be doing that. After today I felt pretty bad. I really was laying into him. I was jokingly, but not nicely jokingly, telling him he shouldn’t be a cop. That he should quit. That he shouldn’t be there. I was very horrible to him, really.

I think today’s bad mood really set me down a path with him I shouldn’t have gone. When we were done for the day I was thinking I shouldn’t have said what I did. It really made me look like a big jerk. I don’t think he knows for sure. I believe he thinks I am totally joking with him, but it wasn’t even close to being nice. I need to pull him aside and let him know it was not a nice thing and that I am sorry.

I just need to head to bed and get this day over with. I am working at the fire station again tomorrow and I hope things will be different.

Structure Fire at the Training House

Around one in the morning we got toned out for a structure fire. I was woken up by the second alarm tones. I looked at the digital pager and found it said the fire was at the training house. I went to the station. I missed an ambulance that left with people going to the fire. No one else showed up. So I sat around the station for about two hours. Engine Thirty-One showed up. I went to the scene with them. I was with Chapman standing by near the scene and ready to take a call in the city should another one come in. Nothing else came.

After the fire was out we helped to clean up the scene. I went back to the station and help clean hose and reload the vehicles with clean hose. I went home at seven in the morning and then right back to the station.

We started by doing rig checks and then cleaned about seven hundred feet of hose the was used for the actual training. After getting it hung up I was able to take a nap for about two hours. I didn’t get two hours of sleep because I tossed and turned a lot and I also got a couple phone calls. At one I got back up and started the afternoon.

We didn’t get any calls during the day. I got some computer work completed and I did some stuff on the spreadsheets for the department and for Rudy.

We had dinner as a group at station one. I watched some TV and worked on some blog entries before going to bed just before ten o’clock PM. I was tired and I figured it was a good time to go to sleep.

This is my Rifle

This morning I went to the burn house from my time to go through the training. We were going inside the house to see fire behavior. We were also learning how to tell if the flames were overhead even if you could not see through the smoke.

After we were in the house we waited for our next lesson which was door ops. We were learning a different way to think about and make entry on a fire. It was interesting to listen to and try out.

After the training I went home. I was going to go to Colfax early and pick up my AR-Fifteen. I am excited about getting it. I bought it late last month. I called up the FFL dealer and make a plan to meet up with him. I got to his place and did the paperwork. I opened it up to inspect it. It is a nice looking gun. I can’t wait to get a chance to use it for target practice.

After getting the gun I went to get dinner and then to the SO for training. We are doing mock scenes. It was a lot of fun today. I was a little nervous, but the first one was a good ice breaker and I learned several things. I was able to apply those lessons to my other mock scenes.

On my last scenario I was dealing with someone who was not very compliant. I had to push him against the wall to cuff him. Then as I actually placed him under arrest he was pulling away from me. I had to put him against the car hood so he wouldn’t keep pulling away so I could keep control.

Overall the instructors thought I did a good job on my mock scenes. I made mistakes but I am learning from them. I was told I did the best search of any of the students on the last guy. The one thing I need to work on is being so trusting and willing to believe what people tell me. I need to be more along the lines of not believing anyone until they prove themselves as being honest instead of waiting to catch them in a lie.

All Day Class

I had a class today where we were learning tactics and strategies for firefighting and reading what the fire is doing. There was a lot of science behind what we were learning and we were exploring how it applies to structure fire. It was an eight hour class.

After the class I went home. Brandon asked what I was doing in the evening. He invited me to see Taken at the movie theatre. We went to the late showing. Peter and Kevin were also there. It was a good movie.

Following the movie I worked on some stuff on the computer before I went off to bed.

Slower Day at PFD

Today I was on the ambulance. We started off the day with a call in a new residential area of town. We had a couple more EMS calls. At dinner time we were close to eating when we got called to a Frat where they had burning food set off their fire alarm.

We had to go there and ventilate the building for a little while before we were able to reset the system.

Thompson Is Back

I got an E-mail from Parrish asking me “What Now?” He mentioned that there was room on A-Shift. It turned out that Thompson is back at work. I am working for him. But he is not on shiftwork yet. I figured if I was going to get pushed aside I would be told. The fact that I haven’t been told means that I will probably continue to work on shiftwork while Thompson goes through some training to get caught up to us.

The idea of going back to being a reserve is good and bad. I like the money that I am bring in right now. But I would love to work with my crew again. I was really looking forward to all the training I would get to do with everyone. I could always quit the full time thing and go back to being a reserve, but the problem there is I would probably burn the bridge of being a full-timer someday down the road.

I went to the bank to deposit a check. I was going to stop by the station and ask what was going on, but I decided against it. I went home only to find I got another check in the mail today. That always happens. the day I go to deposit, it seems like a new check comes in the mail. Not that I am complaining.

I went to class tonight with Ross and Melcher. We had the final test for the Crisis Intervention class. We also made up the ethics class that was missed last December due to the snow. We are supposed to do the pepper spray on Thursday. I don’t want to get sprayed again. I have had it happen. It doesn’t need to happen again. Everyone is joking about doing it, but I have already been trained by Whitman County. So I shouldn’t need to do it again.

Better Shot Left Handed

After going to bed last night around eleven o’clock PM. I was woken up at one-thirty in the morning for a call at the police station. That would be the official start of my day. I would not get back to bed due to calls and training and friends.

First I dealt with two calls at the police station tonight. After dealing with the first person, I more or less was the lead on patient care and I got the refusal. As I was leaving the PD, Khurt said that BKoe was in a foot pursuit. I am going to have to hear more about that when I can.

When we got back to the station we were not even backing into the bay when a call went out for a fire alarm at a frat. We got up there first and started command. I ended up running the call and worked as command. When we got back to the station the Captain said he would write the report on the call so I could do my EMS report.

Just like Chia and I talked about while we were getting dinner food yesterday, I had just got into bed. I put my head on the pillow. Then I readjusted the pillow for maximum comfort when the tones went off for another call. It was in our part of town so away we went. We transported on that one. Before we left the hospital we called back to the PD.

I helped do some of the patient care. The guy didn’t want to work with us, but I talked to him and got him to consent to working with us. During that time I found out BKoe got a small abrasion on his knee from the foot pursuit. I gave him a bandaid and an alcohol wipe to clean it up. We transported from the PD to the hospital.

After getting back to the station I was started to restock the ambulance. But I had to go to the bathroom pretty bad. It was a good thing I did because I got back into the stock room when the tones went off for another fire alarm on campus. I grabbed the stock supplies and got them on the ambulance.

The fire alarm was a bit of a cluster because we did not have the key to get into the room where the problem was. So we waited around for a while until we were finally cleared by fac-ops.

We got back to the station in time for me to wash the ambulance and change into my uniform for the academy. I went to Ace to meet up with Melcher to carpool down to Clarkston. Today we were going to qualify on our handguns. We spent the morning doing more practice.

After lunch we did the qualification. I shot number four in the class. I passed on my first time through. Two people didn’t so we had to give them a second chance. I did a qualification again, but I shot it left handed instead of right handed. After shooting it I found I scored higher left handed. Plus I held up both targets and showed them to people. I asked what target overall was better. I didn’t tell people which one was which until they said what one was better. It turned out everyone thought my left handed target was better. One of the instructors said I should think about getting a left handed holster and practice drawing from it so I can switch over to the left handed holster. I think I should do that. I feel most natural when I hold the gun left handed.

After we qualified we did some other shooting practice with different scenarios. One included holding onto the slide and frame of the gun while shooting it. That didn’t seem like a good idea because I figured we would hurt our hands. But it doesn’t do the pain that I thought it would. It does cause some very minor pain, but for the purpose we do it for, it is worth the pain.

After the shooting was over I got home and I wasn’t all that tired. They did a career callback to the fire station. I went down on it and got some overtime. While I was there I got a message about several people meeting up to celebrate the two D-Twelve guys passing their First Responder test. I said when they head to the Zuu to call me. I was tired by that time because I had been up for nearly thirty-four hours with only one and a half hours of sleep.

But I have a rule that friends are important and when you have a chance to hang out with them you should. I know that if I want to keep getting invited to things I need to show up. If I never show up to anything people will stop sending invitations. I went to the Zuu and spent a couple hours up there. I had some pop and water. I also sang a song with Larry. It was a good time over all. I finally went home around eleven o’clock pm to go to bed.

Slow Day

The fire department was a slow day over all. There was a lot of down time during the day. We did one training exercise where we were in a dark room wearing our turnouts with SCBA mask. The SCBAs were taken apart and then the straps were tightened and tied together. We had to figure out how to get them apart and then put them together properly in the darkness. Then get them on and go on air. There was real loud music playing and a lot of yelling to make it so we couldn’t concentrate and communicate easily. It took us thirty-three minutes to get it done.

I helped Jay with a project he is working on with starting to use text messages to people on the department to announce things like training updates, transfers, and more. That way people outside of the area of the pager can get notified of things more easily.

We ran one call up to Palouse. When we cleared the hospital we picked up the food for dinner. We had turkey burgers and fries. It was very good. We watched Super Troopers before going to bed around eleven o’clock.

First Day on B-Shift

This morning after rig checks there was a meeting with Netupdate I had to participate in. I was given permission to do it. The others left and went to their union meeting. So this worked out well. The meeting lasted a fair amount of time. About twice the amount of time it was supposed to last.

We made the final plans for the release of OP Five-Eight. The rest of the day was pretty laid back at the fire department. We went to the taco truck for lunch. It was my first day on B-Shift. I am trying to learn how they work things. I am trying to learn how these guys like to do things and fit in without causing waves. I want to make a good impression with everyone.

I think the first day went well over all. I didn’t do anything bad.

Last Day on C Shift

Today was my final day on C-Shift. I am looking forward to being on a new shift, but I am going to miss working on C-Shift. Like everything having changes allows you to appreciate what you have. It is like the way I look at it with the seasons. If it was hot year round, you wouldn’t always enjoy it and take advantage of what you have when you have it. By having winter you can enjoy the snow, but also have the summer months to look forward to. Same can be said for the summer heat. You enjoy relaxing in the sun, but it also allows you to enjoy the snow when it does finally come.

Today we had a shift brunch. We did french toast and sausage. For dinner we did chicken and rice. I watched some football on TV and we played some poker into the evening hours. Paul, Jay, Young, Blake, and I had a little tournament. I busted out pretty early, but I because the all time dealer.

Young and I were on the ambulance one last time as shift-mates and we ended up getting skunked on calls for the night.