A Cougar Football Victory

In the morning I made my way to the fire station for rig checks. When that was done we went to station one for brunch. It was pancakes, bacon, sausage, eggs, and hashbrowns. It was very good.

We took the rescue to the stadium. Williams and I worked together. We stood in the corner we normally stand. I made my way to the first aid room to get some hot cocoa. It was pretty windy and it was getting my nose to start to run.

Once the game got going the Cougs seemed to hold their own very well. We were playing Stanford. We were taking the lead and moving towards and easy victory when all of a sudden, they scored a TD. The following kick off lead to a turn over on the four yard-line. But the Cougar defense put up a good stand, keeping Stanford out of the endzone.

When the game was completed the engine crew was working the Doobie Brothers concert. I got Heston to send us there because no one else had signed up for it. We ordered a pizza and enjoyed the show. They were a lot of fun. The music was really good. A lot of songs that people knew. It was neat to look around the place and see people with grey hair and young students all singing along to the same stuff.

It was dead as far as engine calls went. We ended up getting nothing at all to run on, but that was okay with me.

Work a small wildland fire

This morning Bien said he could not do the drive time so I decided that I would go to Colfax and hang out. I was hoping that I would get to go on a call. after a couple hours of watching movies with Ralph a call went out for Steptoe for a wildland fire. It was close to the Colfax/Steptoe line so we went out with one rig.

When we got there we got the pump started. I got into the catwalk and started to spray out the fire as Clark drove. I was getting the head of the fire extinguished as we drove up the field. I got a lot of fire put out.

Then we were sent to the barn that was starting to burn. I was able to get some water on it pretty quickly. We were able to stop the barn from burning. I helped to build a fire line around the barn and we put out some hot spots before leaving.

I did not have a lot of time before I had to be in Pullman to be on call. The Cougars are also on TV so I wanted to watch it. Bien, Dearth, and I were going to watch it at the station. We got some pizza and watched the game against Cal.

The Cougs did not look very good through out the first half. Then in the second half we started to do some scoring. The TV showed a stat that the Cougs have the fifth longest non-shut out streak in college football. It dates back to eight-four against Ohio State. After the Cal game it is at two-hundred and seventy games.

We went to the final seconds to of the game. We were within a field goal after a late touchdown, but we needed to get an onsides kick. But it was a poor attempt at the kick.

I went home and started to work on my web application. I was able to figure out how to get the calendar to display correctly. It felt good to get it done. Now I need to work on a portion of the web site where I need to add a couple of new tables. But I need to think through how that will work to make sure that I design things to work nicely. I am working on the training and check off reporting. I am not sure exactly how I want it to work, so I decided not to continue working on it until I think it through a bit more.

A Cougar Football Win

The day started by going to the fire station. It is Cougar Football Saturday. I took Heston to get the Chief’s car. I got some gas then went back to the fire station. We had some food and went over the job duties for the day. I was working North One. That is where I wanted to work.

It was pretty quiet for most of the day. We had one call where someone was sick due to alcohol. We only dealt with that for a little bit. The Cougs went on to beat UCLA. It was a close game so people stuck around until the very end of the game.

When it was done I went to get my coat out of the First Aid room. But it was locked. Khurt was there. He said he would get the keys for me and meet up with me later on to get me inside.

I talked to Pete in the morning about being on call. I was supposed to be on call so I told him I couldn’t cover for a while during the game. He got Patty to cover for me. And as it turned out we ended up having a CPR call in Pullman. The coroner got called.

I called Patti up and sarcastically ask “have things been quiet?” She laughed. I talked to Pete about something else when he called me. I told him he must have known something was going to happen. He didn’t know something was going on. So I filled him in with what I knew about it.

I called up Khurt and met up with him at the stadium. He let me inside to get my coat and then game me a ride back to my truck.

Russell got drunk

I started off trying to get some things done on the fire application that I started to develop last night. Before long I needed to head to the Moose to watch some football with Ron, Heather, Dan, Michele, and CBass. I watched about a quarter before Russell called to get a ride from the airport. We were going to go to Jason’s and play some poker when he got back.

I picked him up from the airport and he had a couple glasses of wine while on the plane. Then we were off to Jason’s. When I got there Peter was there playing. It was six handed poker for a while. Then one guy finally lost his money and left. Russell was drinking more while we were there.

The game broke up because everyone wanted to go to Zeppoz for the free roll. I had to be on call and do weekly rig checks so I couldn’t go.

I went home and got ready for the rig checks. Then it was off to the station. The rig checks went pretty quick over all. The Rescue kept getting called out. We were done around nine o’clock. I went home and watched Shark and had some dinner.

I worked on my application for a little while before going to bed. But before morning would hit we got dispatched for a structure fire. I ended up standing by the engine for the whole incident. It turned out to be more of a situation where we spent most of the time getting people in and out of the retirement community as well as clearing the smoke from the hallways.

We got done around six-thirty in the morning. I went back home and went to sleep for a while.

The Ankle Doesn’t Hurt

Ever since I got my shot in my ankle the pain has been gone. My ankle appears to have full range of motion again. After standing up for a couple hours last night at the football game, this morning I woke up pain free.

I spoke to Heston and I am going to help out with the Physical Agility test for the paramedic list. Turns out it was a good thing I helped out because several other guys ended up not coming because they ended up going to the PHTLS class. The test went well even though we were down on the number of helpers. We only had four people to test.

I washed my truck and listened into the Cougar football game. Jon asked that I send him updates, but Oregon was scoring left and right. I was a little worried that the Cougs were going to get shut out, but we got one touchdown.

Russell and I met up. I took him and his bike to the bike store downtown Pullman. We went to Safeway where I picked up some groceries. I also got a pizza for us to have later on.

I took Russell home for him to get a nap before we watched the movie and had dinner. I put in the pizza. We ate pizza and watched Thank You for Smoking. After dinner I gave Russell a ride to work.

Champions!!!

Started out this morning going to Pete’s Bar and Grill with Ryan to meet up with Moe and Russell. But only Moe was there. Russell was going to come after half time. We had some chow and watched the Seahawks. They were struggling against the Steelers. At half time Moe got Russell and came back to watch the game with us.

After the game was done, we went to the Emerald to get some lunch. Moe and the girl with him had to head back to the West side so they left from there. Ryan and I took Russell back to his place.

Ryan and I watched some more football before getting ready to play some softball. We had our championship game in both Co-ed and Men’s. The first game was co-ed. We had a good turn out with some of our best women. We went out there and easily went on to a victory. After scoring runs and playing good defense we just did not have to look back. When the game was done we were champions. We did not scream and yell with lots of cheering because it wasn’t even a close game.

We went to Smith Gym to get our t-shirts and a photo for the website. We had less than an hour to get there and back in time for the men’s game. We had twelve guys, but I batted ten. It was a hard fought game. A see-saw battle back and forth with the scored going back and forth. In the final inning we were down by a couple runs. We started to get a rally going. We had one guy on, Bruce at the plate, and Phil on deck. We were down by three. Bruce hit a hard linedrive going over the second baseman, but he made a leap and came down with it for the third out. What could have been.

But those guys hit the crud out of the ball. The bat they had was hot, even the bad hitters were crushing it to the fence or over it. The final score was twenty-two to twenty-five. It sucked to not win the game. We had a very good chance to do it, but came up short. Number two again. Waiting for our first number one with Mens.

When the game was done Ryan and I went to Cougar Country before he had to head back to Spokane. I went home and started to do my packing for my trip to Bellevue tomorrow. I am watching the pets all week.

All of us hangiong out with Russell

The Cougar game was a one o’clock PM starting time. I got to the station early for lunch with the other guys. I was working North One for today’s game. We got up to the stadium. I went into the North booking room. BKoe was in there. I said hello to him.

We went to our spot over the tunnel. Arizona State was ranked number eighteen and the Cougs looked good today. But as the game wore on ASU started to work towards taking a lead on us. We had a chance to tie it up with a field goal, but missed it with only seconds on the clock.

We waited around for thirty minutes after the game. When I got back to the station I helped to take the chief’s car back to his house. I ordered some Cougar Country. I took it home and ate it while getting ready to meet up with Russell, Ryan, and Moe.

Ryan and I took Moe on a drive around Pullman to see some of the changes that have happened since he was last here. We went all over town in a span of about thirty minutes.

We went back and picked up Russell to take him to Zeppoz for work. We hung out there for a while. Ryan was in town on Saturday because Moe came to town to be with Russell to show support to him.

Ryan and I sat down at a table Russell was dealing on. I was going down at first. But then I started to win some. By the time Russell left the table everyone at the table had almost cleaned him out of one dollar chips. But the next dealer won many of them back. Ryan lost his twenty bucks, but I started to win money back.

Finally when I decided to quit I was up twenty bucks and I had given some tips away to the dealers. So it was a good night at Mr. Z’s for me. Moe, Ryan, and I went out to the bar area. They ordered some dinner. I was getting late and I was getting tired so Ryan and I called it a night and Ryan came over to my place. He was spending the night here.

Palousitics Party

I was only asleep for two hours when I got a call from Avalon about giving someone a ride to the hospital for getting a blood draw. I told them I would do it. I was able to get one more hour of sleep before the time I had to be there.

I got up an hour later and got ready to take the person on the ride. It took about an hour total. I went home and was doing some stuff online when I got a call about another transfer. I had planned on going to Dodge about getting floor mats for the truck before going out to the Paloustics party.

I did the transport. Then I went to the Dodge dealer. I found out the floor mats would cost me around a hundred bucks. I thought that was more than I wanted to spend so I decided to go and find if I could get them online cheaper.

I went out to Sunshine road to do the shooting. I met up with Tom and the other Paloustics people. I had my Glock, Ruger, and ten-twenty-two. I put nearly a hundred rounds through the guns. I was wearing safety glasses. One of the shells from the Glock landed between my glasses and my eye. It started to burn I ripped off my glasses. That hurt a little bit.

While we were getting close to being done I got a call from the hospital to take the guy back to Avalon. I did his transfer. I went to Dissmore’s and got a couple things for the rest of the Palousitics get together. I went to Paul’s house on Valley Road. The others were already there. I had some beer and chips for the party. I had a couple beers and some chips plus other food that other people supplied.

I was there for a couple hours with everyone. It was fun to chat about various politics. I left around eight-thirty. I watched the remainder of the Cougar football game, but the Cougs were getting blown out by Arizona. They ended up losing the game. I got to bed pretty early tonight because I was really tired after getting so little sleep.

First Wildland Fire in Pullman

It was going to be a long day today with CPR class and Cougar Football, but I got a couple more things packed in. I stayed up later than I wanted to, so I was tired this morning when I did get up. I get dressed and was off to CPR class at the hospital.

I thought it was an all day class, but it only went five hours, which was an hour longer than it was supposed to go. After the class the reviews from people were good. I got some very positive reviews from the students about my attitude and humor.

I went home to start on my shredding party all on my own. Dearth wanted to respond on calls today if we got any. I told him I would go on them once I was done with CPR class. So shortly after I started the shredding a delta response for a wildland fire went out. It was up by North Campus Heights. I got the station fast so we could take the Rescue. When Foster saw me come in he told me to take the rescue and
he was going to take the engine.

Dearth and Gribbon showed up. We went en route and were told to come in off of Northwood Drive. We went into Aspen Village. It was huge. A couple acres involved. We were told to start to attack. I got the guys going with some hoses and water. I then started to hook to the hydrant. But I also was trying to deal with the requests of the guys on the line. Monte with WSU fire also helped me get set up on the hydrant. I also made Dearth’s line three hundred feet long only to find we needed more. So I told him we had to shut down long enough to add line. He did and I got the new hose on there.

We had D-Twelve come out as well as more Pullman units. It was pretty intense for a while with a lot of people watching in. When the fire was finally over with we started to clean up. I was told to take Rescue on a sweep around the fire taking care of the hot spots. So I got to go in four-wheel drive and use the ground sweeps and walk and roll attack. Pretty cool.

We went to the main station and washed all the hose we used and got it all reloaded on the rescue. It was back in service around seven o’clock that night.

The football game had already started. At first it was close, then USC started to run away with it. But the time I left the fire station USC was in control. I went home to watch it from there and continue to finish my shredding.

I got all the shredding done, filling up three big garbage bags. The Cougs lost.

Jailer

I got called a couple days ago asking if I would come into the jail and work because they were running low on people for Friday. I told Poffenroth that I would. I got down there after the daily call-in meeting. I worked until four o’clock. It was pretty dead for a Friday.

I went to Colfax Fire and talked with Jenny and Rick for a bit. Rick was washing his truck. Ken stopped by. He had to go to the Coroner’s office to get some stuff. I accompanied him down there. We spent about twenty minutes talking about a case we were both familiar with. I got my new ID card.

I went to Russell’s place following getting my uniform off and we went to Moscow to get him a ankle brace for his ankle. We started at Big-Five. But they did not have the greatest selection of sizes. We went to the sports store in the mall and he got what he needed.

He also called Nick and we planned to meet up at Apple Bee’s for dinner. We got over there and it was packed. It was Dad’s weekend at U of I. After eating we went over to the mall to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and Old Navy. They were getting ready to close. A couple of the people there got some stuff and then we left.

I took Russell home and went home myself. I had to be up early and I wanted to get a good nights sleep. But instead I started to watch the Pullman High football game on TV. It was in the final three minutes. Pullman tied it up and they went into OT. Pullman won it in the OT period.

Cougar Football Saturday!

It is that time of year again… COUGAR FOOTBALL SATURDAY! I have a busy day planned for me. I am working with someone on the engine. I am working the football game. I am on call for the fire department.

I started out crawling out of bed in time to get to the station to do drive time with Wilson on Engine Thirty-One. The plan was to drive for four hours. But one other crew leader wanted to get out with one of his guys, so we took the engine back early. Wilson and did the normal things I did with the guys. I quizzed him on roads and some locations of buildings. He did well driving. I had to work with him on the hills and making sure he downshifted some more using the engine to slow him down and not just the brakes.

When we were done I hung out at the station for a while until it was time to head to station one for the lunch and briefing. Following those things it was off to the new location with Rescue. We are parking closer to the IT building.

The game was against the UI. We got called out a couple times for people who were unresponsive here and there around the campus. We also had a situation where someone was waving us down to his area. Turned out to be a police call, so Stewart who was coming down behind me, took the lead and I went back to my position. Turned out they had to eject a fan for disorderly conduct. The crowd cheered when the guy was taken out.

On one call, near the end of the game we were getting out on Stadium Way. A lot of people were walking on it because they now close off part of Stadium Way around the stadium except to emergency vehicles and buses.

Andrew hit the siren really fast and all of a sudden the crowd parted like the Red Sea. It was funny to watch. On one response we going code and one guy saw us and decided to cross the street anyway. He did not try to go fast. He slowly walked across the street. I hit the siren and horn. He just stared at me like I should have come to a complete stop for him, because afterall the world revolves around him.

After the game we only got a couple minor calls. It was a pretty tame night over all. The Cougs went on to beat the Vandals.

Gridiron Classic

Peter and I hooked up around noon to head down to Seattle for Cougar Football. We got to the big parking lot just North of the stadium. We were told no tailgating. And unlike years past, this year they meant it. The parking lot was pretty empty.

We walked around for a while then made a lap around the stadium, up to an upper street and back around by King Street station. Then we stood up there for a while just chatting.

We walked down to the stadium and we just people watched. I got a hold of Hawkes as well. We met up with him. On the way there we found where the big tail gate party was. It looked like CCN. It was packed full of people and it was a huge area. We got to Hawkes with only a couple minutes to spare before we had to leave to the game.

We got way up to our seats. I think we chose the row with the most people who had to come and go through out the game. The game was good over all. For a while the defense showed signs of weakness. Sort of what it looked like against Wisconsin last week. They are really going to have to gel and grow rapidly if we want to compete with some of these good teams.

We went on to a pretty easy victory.

We went off to Peter’s. We got dinner on the way and ate it at his house. While we were there we were talking about a new board game called “Welfare”. It would have some basic Monopoly-like ideas, but would reflect today’s society with gas prices, lawyers, sports teams, political clout, and other things that living in today’s world at times messed up. We spent about two hours talking about ideas and rules for the game.

Engineer Training at the Tower

I was tired after being up so late last night, but I got to the fire station at ten this morning to work with Gribbon on his evolutions. We did several different lays, including a dwelling lay, standpipe, crosslay, and a street pipe. He did a good job. We were running later than I wanted to run. It took about an hour to reload all the hose we unloaded with only three people doing it.

We stopped and got some pizza and pop from Little Caesers and watched the Cougar Football game. They were winning for a while, but Wisconsin started to come back and then they took a lead and extended the lead as our defense looked out matched. I would say that will be our big question mark this season.

I was on call tonight, but it was pretty quiet for the most part. We got a couple calls where we got to play and I had the first drunk of the school year for me. We also spent time watching a movie at the station. But over all it was a quiet night because it was Labor Day weekend and a lot of people left town.

FFL Live Draft

This morning I scheduled to work with James on driving the engine and pumping on it. We planned to put in a total of four hours including one hour pumping. We first went to the tower to pump on the engine. We talked about how the pump works and how to run it for various hose lines. Then we went driving. I started on the bigger less crowded streets.

As the time flew by we went all over town. I also got him to think about roads and go onto road he didn’t know very well. We got a couple fire alarms. We responded to both of them. But both times we pretty much got called off for one reason or another.

Around one o’clock I spoke to Chapman about keeping the engine one extra hour. That caused us to get two more calls. One of them was weird. The guy was running away from us even though he should have been seen. I explained to him that it wouldn’t cost anything to take a look. He still ran off. Then a few minutes later it became clear there were other issues. There was also a verbal domestic going on at the same time with him and someone else.

I got the police down there and we clear as a no patient found. While on that a second call for a guy who fell from an apartment building came out. We went along on that. We did the transport. So, it was after three and I was a little worried that Chapman was going to be upset about us still having the engine out and about.

I also had my FFL draft at four o’clock. The last two years the coroners office has had calls right at draft time. I was hoping that would not happen this year. Turns out it didn’t, but the EMS call almost made me miss part of it.

After the hospital we had to fuel up the rig. Then it was off to the FFL draft. That took about four hours. I got Farve like I do every year.

Following the draft I went to Dan and Denise’s to play poker. John was over there as well. We played nickle, dime, quarter stuff until the three o’clock in the morning. It was a long day at the end of a long weekend for me. I couldn’t wait to get to bed.

Final Thunder Home Game of Ought-Seven

I allowed myself to sleep in today. It was nice, but I missed the autopsy it. I decided to get some work done on my garage. I moved everything from the one side near all the cabinets over to the other side. I also picked out a lot of things to get photos of and put onto Craigslist for give away.

Jerrid came over and we went to Lapwai for the Palouse Thunders’ last home game of the season. When I got there I decided to take my camera and go take photos of the guys working out on the field. One of them, Ten-six-seven, was doing a lot of kicks. I got a lot of photos trying to get a perfect one of him making the kick, but I was either too fast or slow on the button.

While working the booth, Jerrid and the others were up there. I made a comment about how Trevor Ball is always making big plays. I said I say his name every other time I talk. Then Jerrid made a comment about him being my boyfriend. From that point on they were all ribbing me about that.

When I would say Trevor Ball, they would all laugh which would make me laugh. Then one time they all knew it was coming, so they were really laughing before I got to say it. I had to turn off the mic before I even said anything.

After the game I told Jerrid I was leaving him down there for saying what he did about Ball. So I moved my truck and hid from him. When he finally went to the parking lot he could not see my truck. I went running to get into a position where he could not see me. My first step was into a small hole in the ground.

That caused me to fall. I did a full roll and got back up and continued to run. Jerrid called and I told him I was on the Lewiston Grade. Then I came around the corner. It was fun.

But it is funny how he was pretty close with the whole comment. I guess maybe I was obsessing.

The Thunder Back in Lapwai

I went to station thirty-one to get things ready for the physical agility test for the paramedic list. Jerrid was going to be testing. It turned out only three people took the test, so the chances of him getting a job here is good assuming they look at the things he has to offer.

Then it was off to Lapwai for the Palouse Thunder football game. It was against the Columbia Basin Riverhawks. They have not won a game all season. Today would be no different as the Thunder went on to win. The Riverhawks kept it close.

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.

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.

Bummer of a day

I went to Moscow for the Palouse Thunder practice. I was getting photos for all the players and the team photo for the website. That took about an hour overall, plus I hung out for a while watching the practice. Mike D. and I were going to go to the Sports Page to watch the Cougs play Vanderbuilt in the second round of the NCAA tournament. We got a pitcher of green beer for St. Patrick’s Day. The Page also had a couple large pizzas for everyone to chow on.

It was looking good for the Cougs for the most part, but as the game was getting towards the end, I could see things were getting bad. We were not scoring points. We were missing a lot of baskets. After a bit we were down to nail-biting time. We kept the game close and ended up with the last shot of regulation for the win, but missed sending the game into OT. That is why I knew things would not be good. We could not obatin a lead and could not get on a run. We kept it close however. Then we went to a second OT. That is when I got worried. We did end up losing in the second OT. The bar was quiet afterwords. The fight song played, but no one felt like singing a long to it. Losing this game was an upset, but it is funny to think that at the begining of the season if you said that Cougs would be a number three seed in the tournament, no one would have beleived it.

I went home and started to get my house ready for the poker game. It was a cash game. No one was showing up. I could not get a hold of some of the people who said they would be there. In fact, other than Mike, no one who said they would be there showed up. But several people came after phone calls were made by Mike and Morgan.

We ended up having five people at the biggest point of the game. I was doing very well. Wolf was knocked out. John showed up after he had some time with his family for his Birthday. After John got there Morgan stay around for a little while. But he busted out. Mike busted out. Michael busted out. Pretty soon with just John and I. I could not win a hand to save my life. Everytime we had a game were some real betting was going on John would pull it out. The last hand of the night summed up the night. I had two pair. John had an inside-straight draw. I went all-in. John called. He put his hand down saying he needed an eight. He had four outs on the river. He found an eight. He beat me. So that was that.

I went to my den and worked on getting the photos cropped for the Thunder Website. It was getting late and I had to get up early. I called it a night after a lot of losses.

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.

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.

Nadirs’ Post Season Party

I had two events planned for today. One was the post-season softball party for the Nadirs and the other was being the PA for the Thunder. The morning started off with a couple phone calls. Then at ten am I got up and started to get ready for the party. We were meeting at Zeppoz at noon.

I got up and got all my stuff for the football game and the post-season party gathered and ready to go. I went to Zeppoz a little early to make sure we could get a big table. When I got up there it was empty. I was about fifteen minutes early.

Soon the others started to filter in. I had some pizza and finger steaks ready to eat. I also had three pitchers of beer and some pop. As more people get there the food and beer quickly disappeared. So I ordered some more with the remainder of the money. I got some photos of the rookies as well as the guys who will be leaving the team after graduation.

Rookies: Trent, Dave, Jory, Ryan R

Retiring: Richard, Trent, Aaron

I announced the award winners as well as the new team records that were set. This season, records were tied, none were broken.

I had a few beers with the rest of the team. I also met one person who will probably play with us next season. He came along to hang out as well.

When the party was over, about two hours later I headed to Moscow for the football game. I met with the Yakima Manager to get the pronunciation for some of the players taken care of. I also learned about some new Thunder players. I pulled out my laptop and found I left the power cable at home. Luckily I had extra batteries.

I got the text files updated. I got the PA room opened and set up in there. I saw that Wally, from last years team was at the game. I went down to the seats to see him. I was David come in. He is the barefoot kicker for the team. He was limping. He hurt himself in a rugby game earlier in the day, so he would not be able to play.

The game got going and in the middle of the first quarter my computer shut down. So I had to restart it. In the mean time I used the paper sheets to announce the game until the computer was running again. I put in a second battery in the DVD slot. But it did not make the battery life get better. I pulled it out and found that that battery was nearly dead. So I put in the other battery. That raised the battery life. I also turned down the contrast and closed the lid during the longer breaks to make it last as long as possible.

Yakima was undefeated going into this game and beat the Thunder pretty easily. We scored a few times, but not enough. The replacement kicker did not have the leg that David did, so Yakima had better ball position all the time.

After the game I gathered my stuff. I got some dinner and headed home. I met to go to bed earlier that I did, but I could not get myself to find the bedroom right away, I chose to watch some TV first.

Mad Cow without the disease

This morning started off with meeting Ben at the Colfax Golf course for a golf tournament. It is a scramble and I am playing on Ben’s team. I am not that good and he is really good, so I am surprised he asked me to play. I feel bad for the other guys on the team. I hope that I do not hold them back.

Ryan from the softball team and a guy named Mike were the teammates. We started on the sixth hole. The problem is that we had to use four drives from each person on the eighteen holes. I don’t have a great drive so I was hoping to do well on the short holes so the team would not be handicapped by my short drives. We used one of my drives on the first eleven holes. So on the final seven we had to use three of mine. I was worried about it. But it turned out I had two great drives in a row. I had a two-hundred and twenty-five yard drive followed by a two-hundred-fifteen yard drive. On one short Par four Ben drive to the green in one. We were about twenty feet or so out. I took the first put and sank it for the Eagle! I was really happy about that.

Ben, Scotty, Mike, Ryan

We ended with a four under and ended up in fifth place. Last time Ben’s team took first place. But I don’t think I really handicapped the team that much at all. We won some prizes. I got a three pack of golf balls.

Colfax Police Officer Nebe and the Steer

While we were on the course around the second hole I looked over and a steer was running on the course. Ben got some pics. It was running around and Bryce from Colfax PD tried to get it back to the slaughter house. The steer had nothing to do with that and ran across the course and across a green leaving hoof prints all the way across it. When we got to the seventh hole we heard a gunshot come from the neighborhood to the South. A tiny bit later we saw the steer run back really close to the ninth hole that we were on. It was bleeding and pretty mad at that time. It ran past the ball that Mike drove on the ninth hole and got some blood on the ball.

Mike with the blood red ball

Finally it made its way back to the slaughter house and Scott from Colfax fire was asked to come down and finish it off. With one shot between the eyes it was dropped.

I went home and grabbed my computer and stuff for the football game. I called Ryan twice and left messages. He never answered his phone nor returned my messages. I am disappointed that Ryan is not willing to help me when I need him.

I made my way to the Kibbie Dome. After the eighteen holes of golf my ankle was really sore. I was hobbling everywhere. I got my computer set up and got the final touches on the teams’ roster text files. I got the script for the game. I was going to have to do it on my own today again. But I am hoping with my FootballPA application that I will be able to do it.

Brian’s, the teams’ PR guy, brother was going to ask his girlfriend to marry her at half time. We set up a screen to read out “Lisa, will you marry me?” At half time I made an announcement that there was a special message on the screen. I never heard what the answer was because Brian’s brother never showed back up to the stats booth where he did stats. So I am not sure if things went well. I am sort of thinking they did not go well.

I was able, with the help of the FootballPA do the game by myself. For the most part I was able to keep up with things and did a good job I believe. I made notes of things I would like to change about it to make it easier to use for the next time.

After the game I got some dinner and drove to Colfax. I dropped some stuff off at the coroner’s office and then went to control and talked to the guys up there for a tiny bit. I was tired so I went home and watched some TV before falling asleep.

Football PA

I started out with an idea and by the time I went to bed it was a version one-point-oh really. The idea was to have a computer application that I could type in the numbers of a football player or players into a home team and away team text box. It would then print out the names of the players I needed to read off. It would give their number, name, and phonetic pronunciation if it is a hard one. This will make it easier for me rather than looking up numbers on two lists, trying not to lose my place and announce them. Now it will all be in one place.

I was last thinking of added a little yardage calculator that I could use to type in where a play started and ended for long plays and it will quickly tell me the yardage. It would have a button that would tell the computer the user crossed the fifty-yard-line. That will be an upgrade.

So far what I have is the simple form and a simple way of running it. It will read in text files, but they have to be formatted just right. I thought about using XML but I figured it would be easier to work with text files rather than XML because they are being built by hand. Maybe a future improvement will allow a copy and paste from something like an Excel spreadsheet that will have all the data there and then simply save as a text file. Then it would format the textfile for me. One other nice thing would be to read in a file and tell it to print it out on a legal size sheet of paper so I always have a paper backup just in case something goes down on the computer.

So when I got home from work Jon helped me out with some things to tie together the loose ends. It is working and ready for use this Saturday. I hope it will work like I want it to.

I may have to go and get a ten-key add on for the laptop or I may bring a normal size keyboard so I can more quickly type in the numbers. I choose to use the period as the number separator because the period is on the ten-keypad if that is the way I go, so I can do the whole entry and read out with one hand.

Thunder Home Opener

This morning I was woken up by my pager, but I never heard the call out. I missed the call. I went to the station anyway and hung out for a few hours. Ken and I talked about religion and watched a movie call the Doctor. Then I called Reggie because I had not heard from him. He flaked out on me and now I don’t have a spotter. So I started to call everyone in my phone book to see if I could find someone. I could not. As a last resort I called Ryan hoping he would help me out in my time of need. He did not.

I stopped at Big-Five and got some binoculars to use at the game. I drove to the stadium. I met up with Brian. I got the team roster and I got the other teams’ roster. I started to get their names written down if they were hard to pronounce. Several players said hello and shook my hand. It was good to see people. I went into my booth and set up my stuff.

I had a real hard time at first trying to say the offense and defense players when they made the play plus all the announcements. Finally I decided that I would only do defense if it was quick and easy. Other than that I only announced the offense. I think I started to better after that. I still made a few errors with saying things. I got tongue tied at times. But over all I think I did an okay job.

After the game Jerry said he wanted me to be a lot more one-sided in my announcements. He pretty much wants me to be a cheerleader and get people to make noise on third down and other things. I am not sure that it is right, but he is the team owner so I will do so.

After the game I went home. Then I stopped at the jail. I hung out there most of the evening. Ryan tried to call about eight times. I did not answer the phone. I just let it go to voice mail. The last time he tried was about one am. I was not much in the mood to talk with him.