Cougs Beat up Oregon State

Today we had a department meeting with the chief’s. There wasn’t a lot of new information for the reserves. The response codes have hardly changed for us, however, the full-timers will start to see a change on Feb one.

After the meeting it was time to get up to Beasley for the basketball game. I spent a lot of the game on the main walkway inside the building. I had a good view of the game. The Cougs were not dominating the game against Oregon State, but it was one where they were beating the Beavers the whole way through.

Next up number seven, Oregon Ducks.

Move in Poker Party Part Two

I was woken up by a call from Michael this morning. But once I was up I decided to stay up. I tooled around the house working on getting it ready for the poker game tonight. There was also the Cougar Basketball game on today against the Huskies. I knew it was going to be a wild game because they were calling in cops early due to all the people and problems they were having around Beasley.

I went to Safeway and got some regular groceries and some stuff for the poker game. I got home and I realized my trip to the hardware store was forgotten. I was going to get a screw to fix my pantry door that has had the wrong screw since I moved in. I was down at Turner when a call came in for a cardiac problem at the coliseum. I went to The Deuce. Michael showed up as well. We went on the call, but it did not turn out to be too much. We fueled up on the way back.

I went to the hardware store to only see they had closed. So I went home and started to get ready for the poker game. I was setting up the Tournament Director software I had. I got the cards counted and made sure the decks were good. I then got the table set up and the food ready to go. I made some last minute phone calls.

Russell was the first to show up. He got a pop and we started to talk about who all was coming. Soon others started to show up. Andrew and James showed up. Then a couple more people showed up. We all started to get ready to play the game.

I paid for the buy ins for most of the people because they had helped me move and missed my last game. Dan and Denise were there along with Andrew, Russell, James, Brad, and Tyson did not make it.

I was doing pretty well through out the tournament. Andrew bought in a couple times. When he was near the end the final time I talked him through the “chip and a chair” thought process. He started to earn his way back into the tournament.

But soon Andrew, Brad, Denise, and James were out. It was Russell, Dan, and I. But I was not getting any cards to speak of. I was finally eliminated in third place. Dan and Russell went head-to-head. But Russell was going to have to get going. Dan was going to be playing by himself and that would mean that Russell would lose his chipstack to blinds and Dan would win.

But Dan was nice and decided to play with Russell on the next couple hands. Russell ended up finding a hand. Dan went all-in. Russell covered and won. So Dan pretty much let his first place finish go to second place.

After the game I cleaned up a little bit and went to Zeppoz with Dan and Denise. We play a couple different table games. I ended at Texas Shootout. I started to win some money there and walked out near even for the evening at Zeppoz.

Busy Saturday Evening

The day started out late as I stayed up pretty late myself. Then as the evening got closer I got ready for the fire department early. I wanted to go there and watch the football game. The Seahawks were playing the Cowboys in the first round of the playoffs. There was also a Cougar basketball game tonight versus Arizona.

I had linen and other items that I had to deliver up there. I dropped off Anthony and then drove around the block as he dropped off the linen because the place was so full for parking. When I was coming back to Beasley we had a call so I drove past Anthony and we was looking at me wondering what I was doing. I knew he didn’t know there was a call because he did not have a radio.

We went inside. Because I was there I got the linen changed out and then we worked on fixing up the cabinet and getting rid of the blue jump bag. We were also getting glimpses of the basketball game.

We took off and went back to the station. We started to get calls and between the calls we would watch the Seahawks game. It came down to the final snap by the Cowboys where Romo bobbled the ball and the Seahawks stopped them from scoring. That allowed the Seahawks to move on to round two of the playoffs.

Then we watched the Cougar basketball game. That was very close through out. The Cougs lead most of the way, and then it went to overtime. The Cougs took a lead and kept it the whole way. I got a call in the finally minute of overtime so I had to listen to the last few seconds on the radio. The Cougs won! They beat number seven Arizona.

The call we got took us up to Palouse. We got on scene and were almost immediately turned around for a delta in the city. We got on scene of the delta call as they started the transport. So we cleared and went back to the station.

Following three nearly back-to-back-to-back calls we went on one last one where a couch was on fire. We were not first on location, but due to the difficulty of finding it we drove around the block and ended up getting to the scene first. We cleared the engine, put out the fire, mopped up, and did the report for the call.

I got home around three-thirty in the morning.

First Coroners Case of the year

I started out the morning out with a meeting in the jail in Colfax. It was time for the Sheriff to just open the floor to discussion and to talk about some plans and goals on the year. I was at the meeting until around nine-thirty in the morning.

I got back to Pullman and had some lunch. Just then my neighbor came over with some food for me. It was a soup-type item. I had eaten so I took it and put it into my fridge for later.

The Culligan guy showed up to look at my system and determine what kind of water softener I need. I am going to get away with the cheaper one because I have the smaller pipes. That is scheduled to be installed next week.

I was working on spotting my gas meter. I am having an odor of natural gas around the stove from time to time. Parrish told me how to spot the meter. So I went around the house and shut down all the gas stops and checked where the meter was at.

I went to my office and got some work done for about fifteen minutes. I did not see any movement so that meant that the leak was not between my meter and the stops. So I had to turn on one appliance at a time and see which one would make the meter move. I turned on the stove and waited for about fifteen minutes. I went out and there was no movement.

I was going to turn on the other stops when Pete gave me a call about a case in Albion. I told him I wanted to go along with him. I left only the oven on and kept everything else shut down. The case took several hours. We had to call for Albion Fire to come help us move the deceased out of the bedroom. It has also started to snow like crazy around the time of the call.

The snow was piling up really fast. We had about six or seven inches in a matter of hours. The highways were getting closed due to the slide-offs and problems. We cleared the scene and made our way back to Pullman. We waited at the funeral home only to find the lady driving the body went the long way back to Pullman. She got stuck in the traffic and ended up turning around and going to Colfax instead.

I left Pete around five o’clock to go back home. I was working the Men’s Basketball game tonight. I got to my place and checked my E-mail. Then I got ready and went to The Deuce for the game. I got some Little Caesars on the way.

The game was good, I was able to go in and out of the first aid room to watch parts of the game. We had a patient near the end of the first half and ended up dealing with her for the rest of the game. So I missed the rest of the game, but the Cougs won it.

Paying my Mortgage

Volk and I were working the women’s basketball game against UCLA today. We were up at Beasley. We spent most of the time watching the TV coverage of Saddam’s execution. It was finally hung near the seven o’clock hour our time. Not a lot of a change in my life, but it is an interesting thing.

The women lost to UCLA in the same way the men lost to UCLA. It was a close game up to the end, but then the Cougs had to foul UCLA when UCLA was up by one point. The scored two more on the free throws. The Cougs had a chance to tie it up, but missed the three pointer. The game ended just like the mens’ game.

This was my first time that I had to pay my mortgage. I will have another three-hundred-fifty-nine times to do that. Well I hope in thirty years I am not still living here. I will want a bigger house some day. But I do like my house as it is right now. I wish it was a little larger at times, but over all it is great place.

Goodbye Coach Akey

I am saddened by the news that Coach Akey is leaving WSU for the Idaho Vandals. I hope nothing but the best for him and hope that someday he will come back as the Washington State Head coach.

We had the Colfax Fire Christmas party tonight. I went down to that. I bought one raffle ticket and ended up winning the main prize which was a quilt that Angela made. It is pretty neat and I was hoping to win that. People were giving me a hard time that I had only bought one ticket, then when I won they could not believe it.

We are still without power at work so I have been unable to get any work done. I hope that I can kick some butt on bugs when the power does come back on, I feel like I am getting way behind.

I went to the fire station in Pullman earlier in the day for fire training. We were doing stuff on setting up staging and rehab.

Horrible Day as a Coug

The Apple Cup today was supposed to be a victory over the Huskies. Instead I watched them celebrate on our field. It sucked really bad. I could not stand watching so many of the Huskie fans walking into the stadium as smug as they looked. It was like we were below them. I had one Huskie fan demand that I do something about the crowd. I was a “fire marshall” and I should do something about the crowd. I hate the dawgs!

Besides the crushing defeat of the Cougs I spent some of the evening at home with my mom. She came into town today to help around the house. She has been cleaning stuff up and putting away my kitchen stuff. She also brought over some baseboard and flatbar for the floor.

Cougs Go Down Again

Being on call and without cable TV I decided that I would hang out at the station and watch the game there. But I was disappointed to see it was not on TV at all even though the game had such a late start time. I was able to listen to it on the radio as I was doing my other tasks, but it was not a pretty sounding game. The cougs were spanked by Arizona State. That really sucked. The bowl hopes are fading with these latest losses.

The Blues

It sucks when the Cougs lose, it sucks more when they should have won to begin with.

Cougar Football Disappointment

It is Dad’s weekend and I am on call for the evening. Arizona is in town to play the Cougs. Brian and I get Rescue ready and make our way to Station one for the meal followed by going to the stadium for the game.

We took our place on the East pad and went into our spot. It was a pretty tame game for calls for us, however, the Cougs were not playing well against Arizona. They were running circles around the Cougs. We could not hold our own against them and ended up losing. It is never fun to lose.

Following the game we went back to the station. I hung around the station watching some TV and waiting for a call to time in. It was a pretty tame night around town as well.

Another Victory!

My plan for the day was to play poker with Mike and watch the Cougs on TV. Plus I was going to be on call in the evening. The game started at two in the afternoon. The Cougar game started at four. I was doing really well on my table. I was up and winning some nice pots. But as the two hour mark came people were doing their add-ons and rebuys. I was finding my self to be out of the chip lead. Plus I had to leave in less that two more hours. So I started to play more loose. I got to the point where about twenty minutes before I had to leave I found a reasonable hand to push all-in on. I ended up losing out, but that was fine. I had to leave.

I got to the station and we did some training up at the training tower. It was more pump and roll training with the recruits. They just went through the training and I wanted to give them some more hands on time with it. The more you do it the more you know it is what I figured. They did pretty well at everything.

Following that I was down at the station for quite a while. We had a couple calls. One was a structure fire, but that did not really turn out to be much more than some fire under a deck. But we did some overhaul on it to make sure it was out. We also had some medical calls dealing with substance abuse. I hung out at the station for a fair amount of the night watching the final episodes from this season’s Rescue Me. I finally got to see the final two episodes.

I decided it was time to go home and get to bed. I was not there very long when we got called out to another medical call. When leaving the hospital we got yet another call. We were running most of the night after about two in the morning. I did get to bed around five in the morning.

Hanging out with Ben

I got a call from Ben to start out my morning. We planning on meeting up and doing a short golf lesson and hitting the a bucket of balls. I met Ben at the golf course I paid my fees and bought a bucket of balls. I pulled out the seven iron and he started by telling me a lot of things about stance, holding the club, and the swing.

After getting through the bucket of balls my back was really hurting, but I was ready to get going. Ben’s friend showed up and we started with our three-some. After the first hole there was a solo golfer behind us. We invited that guy to join us. He did so for the rest of the way we had a four-some. I was not having the best of days but I was holding my own. Ben would give me some instruction on the course when certain situations came up. He taught me how to get out of a sandtrap. After we were done with the round of golf Ben and I decided to go to the WSU baseball game that was underway.

We went inside and saw Mark from our softball team. We sat behind home plate a few rows back. The score was seven to zero in the first inning. The Cougs were doing well. But while we were there we only saw good pitching, with no offense to speak of. Towards the middle of the game Ben asked if I wanted to go to his place and get something to eat real fast then come back.

So we drove to Ben’s and I had a beer and a TV dinner. We started to watch some of the Best of Will Ferrell. As we got into it Ben said we would go back to the game at three pm. So we left and walked back into the stadium. We got our seat. Started to get into the game. A guy from the other team hit into a double play and the game was over. We sort of laughed about the fact we came back for one more play.

We went back to Ben’s apartment. We were going to watch a couple movies. When I got there he had the idea to hit the softball for a while. So we went to the playfields and hit the ball about thirty times each. Then we went back to Ben’s apartment. We watched Caddyshack and Anchorman. I had never seen either of those movies. I was laughing so hard during them. Ben made a couple bags of popcorn. I could not believe how funny those movies were.

I talked to Ryan and we decided to go to dinner at Applebee’s in Moscow. So Ben and I rushed over there. We sat down and ate. JT was our waiter. He gave us all free pop. That was nice of him. After we finished eating we decided to hit the bars in Pullman. Ryan was the one who really wanted to go. So Ben got his car and drove us to My Office. We got on the trivia and I had one more beer. We played trivia until about two in the morning. Ben offered me a place to stay for the night, but I decided to head back to Colfax and sleep there.

Today was a blast. I have not had a day like this for a while. Just being busy doing fun stuff, one thing after another. And on top of that getting a chance to hang out with Ben so long without other people around. It was just a wonderful day.

Finally! The box is working!

So the build is working. I got my box built and everything was working. The VI I had been assigned was rolled back and there was still something with reporting of application exports I needed to do. The DBA got the code I needed to add for the most part. All I needed to do was put it into the Webpage and make it work. There were a few things I had to fix, plus there was some data I had to figure out how to link to the SQL statements. Once I got that complete it all worked and life was good. I was able to check in my changes and move on with life.

When that was done the day was almost at an end. So I went home and watched some TV. Joe had sent me an E-mail about a new product to add to the database. I was going to try to get some other stuff done with the site, but by the time dinner was done I wanted to watch CSI. So I was watching that while the Cougs were playing Stanford in the Pac-Ten tournament. I was flipping back and forth. Then the game was down to the final minutes. The TV shows I like were done. Ryan called me and we watched the game together.

With less than ten seconds the Cougs were driving they had one last shot at the buzzer and it fell short. The Cougs lost by two and were knocked out of the tournament. It was disappointing, but the Cougs had a decent year and it will look better next year.

I got Joe’s addition made to the Website and I did not work on the other admin stuff. I was getting tired so I went to my bedroom I watched some TV before I decided to go to sleep.