Filling Air Bottles

I got an E-mail from George about SCBA fit testing. I went down to get it done, and then I was asked to help out with the air bottles and getting them filled down at the station. I would have to take Rescue down to station one. I got a hold of Tyson about getting his fit test done. Once his was done he was about to get an SCBA mask.

He stuck around with Reed and one of the new guys to help us get the bottles emptied, new o-rings installed, and then refilled and put back in service. We had a system going where everyone was staying busy and we were getting the job done, but it still took nearly five hours to complete the whole thing.

I got out of there around six o’clock to take the Rescue back to The Deuce. I talked with Chapman about some of the upcoming changes. He agreed that we need to have the big tools on Rescue, whether it is the old tools or the new ones, but it should not be a combitool. We also talked about the Ambulance now taking calls for the North side of town. So the career guys will be running two rigs, and we will not see the ambulance always come from the main station.

I got a call from Mike about playing poker at his place. It is our first time since coming back from Christmas Break. I was in a hurry because of the way time was getting away from me that I got a pizza from Little Caesars. We were there until after one in the morning. I lost my first ten pretty quick, then I bought in again and hovered around the twenty bucks I bought in for. I was up and down for the rest of the evening and ended up losing about a eleven bucks total for the night, so that wasn’t so bad. It was good to get back with everyone and play some poker.

Happy New Year!

I spent a lot of the day in the house working on going through my papers and other items. I mainly got through a small stack of Evegreen’s and scanned the items I wanted to keep. I also had the lady coming from Spokane to get my computer parts. I can’t wait until they are all gone. It has been a long time coming to free myself of a ton of the items that I had laying around for years. This is all part of my campaign to free myself of being a pack rat. I still have a long way to go however.

Around nine o’clock I decided that I was going to go out and I was not going to spent the whole day in the house. I made myself some dinner. Then I talked to Ryan on the phone for a while. I sent him a copy of an article he wrote for the Evergreen a while back about how to keep cool in the summer time.

I got cleaned up and I headed to the fire station to turn in my time card. I talked with Sugden and Volk for a few minutes. It was just ten minutes until the new year. So I high tailed it to Zeppoz. I caught up with Dan, Michele, Ron, Heather, Brian, Diana, Michael B, and the others. We watched the drop of the ball. Then everyone cheered and drank. Michele game me a beer to celebrate.

I went into the casino and talked to the guys in there. Russell was working. Denise, Baron, Sauce, Zach, and some of the others were there. Several of us went to the Zuu for the final hour before two o’clock there. Baron and I had a shot of tequila. We played some pool and darts.

Following the Zuu closing I went back to Zeppoz and played some poker and talked with Russell for a while. I got home around three in the morning. I was doing some stuff online and watching a TV show and did not get to bed until four in the morning.

Poker Night in Colfax

Russell came over to my place and helped me remove hard drive from some of the computers I was giving away. I found though that there were four computers in the garage I am not getting rid of at this point. So I will have six computer cases sitting around unless I take some time to go through them and get rid of them. I think I will have to do that, but I don’t have the time any time soon. I need to make a list of things I want to get done and put them in order by priority.

After we were done with the computer we went to Moscow. First to Walmart followed by Office Depot, then to Hastings. We looked at the selection of gay magazines. Then we went to the mall. Starting by going to Macy’s and then down to the bed and bath place. That is probably the most gay place to be in the mall. Perfect for us I suppose.

When we walked inside there was a ten-six-seven working. I spent some time trying to figure out if he was family or not. After watching him and his actions I started to think that, plus the fact he chose to work there. At one point when I talked to him it was pretty clear he was family. I was looking at getting some oils that when heated give off a pleasant odor. I chose not to when I saw the prices for everything.

We left there and I took Russell back to my place so he could get to sleep so he could work.

I got ready to hit Colfax for some poker. I got someone to cover for me at the fire department. We played a dealers choice game down there. Jim, Connie, Scott, Carl, Kathy, and I were there for several hours playing poker. I ended up losing some. Connie, the newbie, and Kathy did okay. I think Jim won some money as well.

I was down there until nearly one in the morning when the game finally broke up. I my way back to Pullman I called Whitcom to let them know I was on call for the coroner. I also asked to talk to Jamie.

I had thought of a joke that only certain people could really understand. It went like this:

Did you hear Saddam was executed? (The other person will usually make some sort of comment whether it is sarcastic or just affirming that they had heard.)
I guess he was given three options for method. Hanging, firing squad, or driving on One-Ninety-Five.

Today was a good day. It was enjoyable to go out with Russell and walk around some stores as well as playing some poker with my friends from Colfax Fire.

Got me some French Toast

After nearly forty-eight hours of waiting, I finally got my French toast. At first I needed to get some eggs. Then it was later I realized that I needed milk. Plus I got called to a coroner’s case followed by rig checks. So, finally I was able to get my ingredients. I made bacon and put on the French toast. It was great.

There was also some poker to be played tonights at Mike’s. I went up there and for a fair portion of the night I was winning. Actually, I was up pretty much all night. At the end I lost some ground, but over all I was up twelve bucks.

My First Poker Party

I was excited by the fact that this evening would be my first poker party at my new house. I had the people who helped me move come over for the poker game. But before the party I had to get my house all set up and ready. The morning, however, started off with a phone call from my mom. She told me Gary’s mom, Natalie, died. I found the obituary online and read about it. I don’t know much about what happened at this time.

When I went out shopping for stuff for my poker party, I got a card for Tom. I am going to send it to him.

I got my house cleaned up and set out all sorts of things for people including my hard-A collection. I got some beer and pop at the store as well.

Peter came over early and we watched Four Brothers on DVD. Shortly after that was over Mike showed up and we got the computer set up for the poker party. John, Andrew, Russell, as well as Peter, Mike, and I were here for some cards. We started at around six-twenty in the evening. I got wiped out early by Russell on an all-in bet. I had to rebuy. The game carried on. My plan was to have a break at seven-forty-five for pizza. I had ordered it earlier in the day.

But they showed up thirty minutes early. So we took our break early and had pizza. We knocked out all the pizza’s before getting back to cards. After the fourth round we had the final re-buys and add-ons. Then it was time to knock people out. We had already knocked out Andrew. He chose not to rebuy. Then we knocked out Russell, John, and Peter. Finally it was just Mike and I playing heads up, but I was not getting anything at all and he had about ten-times my stack. I slowly lost my money mainly to blinds.

Then we broke out the change and started to play a nickel-dime-quarter poker game. It was dealers choice. Peter, Mike, John, and I played until one in the morning. When we completed our final game Peter, John, and I hung out for a few minutes talking and I got my kitchen and dining room cleaned up and everything put away so I did not have to do it in the morning.

Almost missed one

This evening I was playing some poker for a couple hours with my normal Monday night crew of players. I was up and down most of the night. But as we were getting ready to call it a night I was only down a couple bucks. They called last hand and I had pocket Jacks. I raised the pot two bucks. Someone else raised me, and I went all in. The other two guys who were still in called. Someone flipped over KJ off-suit and one guy flipped over pocket Aces. I was behind. The flop turned up a King. It was down hill from there. I ended up losing the rest of my money. What luck to get a good hand only to lose to someone who got pocket Aces on his final hand.

I went home and tried to get some sleep. It was after two in the morning. I was sleeping soundly when I hear dispatch give the patient update to one of the units going en route. I quickly got up and went to the station. I was still within the seven minutes, but I got a slow start. In fact we still made it on scene with the other units. Luckily I was close to the station.

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.

Spending the weekend in Seattle

With no need to work in Whitman County, I opted not to go out there this weekend. I was planning on relaxing in Renton. I was going to hit lunch with Mike, the guy who I have a ride from Vantage to Othello last week, but something came up. A couple guys and I went to Three Pigs to have lunch.

Overall work was pretty uneventful. I has softball practice after work, so I just hung around making more Internet recordings. Close to practice time I got ready and then headed across the I-Ninety bridge to Seattle. We were playing at the Raineer playfields. Practice went well. I hit the ball pretty well. I also spent time playing outfield. The coach had me start to work with people on throwing. Some people have never learned how to throw so they do not have much knowledge on throwing.

When practice was over I headed back home. I got some dinner and then watched TV for a while. I had plans on going out, but not until later on. Finally around eleven o’clock I decided now was good. I went to the bank and got some money and went to Diamond Lil’s. I did not get a hand to save my life. I played out a few hands but I would quickly find the cards were the opposite of what I needed to win.

One of my final hands I got a King and Queen of hearts. All low cards and no hearts came out. So I bought in for twenty bucks more. I lost that quickly as well. After less than an hour of playing, I decided I was not done. I went across the street to Freddie’s Club. I played twenty-five dollar a hand blackjack. I did well there. In fact I won two-hundred and fifty dollars.

So I went home with some happiness. On my way home I got to the Maple Valley Highway where it intersects with Four-oh-Five. About twenty rice-burners all got onto four-oh-five going South. I did see one American Muscle in there too. All the cars had several people in it. It was clear they were all together. I wondered where they were going. It was about two o’clock am and I can only assume they were going to race somewhere.

Good winnings at Texas Hold’em

I was doing well at work today. I started with a brunch for a birthday celebration for someone at the company. We went to the Brown Paper Bag or something like that in Redmond. The portions were huge and I was unable to eat it all. The same was the case with everyone else.

Then I started to get real work done. I was getting closer and closer to figuring out the problem with Dexma not responding to my computer. First off actually I needed to know if they requests were getting out. They were. Then I had to figure out if the problem was the outside not being able to get to my computer. It turned out it was able to.

I put a stop in the ASP code and ran a report. Within a few minutes it started the debugger. So I knew it was getting to my computer. I spent time stepping through things and looking at the data to see why it was not working. I think I finally isolated the problem. I have a theory that my problem is also the same problem on production. If that is the case I would have figured out a major problem we have, up to this time, been unable to figure it out.

With not being able to do anything further because it was after five o’clock pm, and all the people I would need were gone, so I went home. I watched the Mariners and had dinner. Then I watched Mr. Deeds. I planned on staying up late so I could be less tired for the ride along with Joe tomorrow.

I got some money from the bank and went to Diamond Lil’s. I got on a four-eight table. It was a really cool table. People were having a good time. I went up more than a hundred bucks. Then I had a ten and something in my hand. The board had a pair of tens and a pair of nines, giving me the third best hand, but because I had a ten, I actually had the second best hand. Only a pair of nines, for quads would beat me. After a fair amount of bets and raises to get to that point, I lay down my ten and this girl lays down a pair of nines. She beat me.

So I was dwindling down a little bit. I got back to my original buy in and then I went down a little bit from there. A guy came to the table. He was a ten-six-seven, but could have been better off with a hair cut. There was something about him made me keep my eye on him most of the time he was there. I am not sure what it was, but he kept my attention.

So I am in the big blind and I get dealt a four-five off suit. Just on a whim I raise. Several people stayed in. The flop was a two-three-six. That gave me nut straight. There were bets and raises. Then on the turn there was an ace. It did nothing to weaken my hand. So I still raised. I was hoping for a card that would not make a flush happen. And something that would not ruin my straight by making a bigger one. A queen of spades came out. That sealed the deal. I bet and one person called. He had put me on pocket aces or something like that because I had raised before the flop. He was shocked to see what I raised on. I was laughing. I won more than two hundred bucks on that hand. It was awesome.

I played until around two-thirty am. The table started to break up. The workers split our table and sent people to other tables. So I took that opportunity to go home. I wanted to stay up a little bit later because I was trying to sleep in a lot on Saturday so I will not be tired when I got on the ride along. I got home and watched some TV before I actually did go to sleep, which was around four o’clock am.

All day with Ryno!

With my alarm clock buzzing I got up and headed to the coroners office for the meeting. We went over the last few cases and we looked over the autopsy shots from the murder that happened a few weeks ago. It was interesting to see the bullet path and the damage to the brain.
Following the meeting I went into the SO and printed off a few things for my softball team and checked my E-mail. The plan for the day was to hang out with Peter like we had planned. I called him around noon and let him know I was free and to give me a call when he was available. I sat around the house for a while relaxing.

Then I decided to go to my office and get some stuff on the computer done. I had a few thousand E-mail messages I had to sort. I spent a lot of time doing that. I hate paying first step internet for spam service and still getting as much spam as I do. It is horrible.

It was getting later. I was going to get a pizza from Little Caesars. When I was there I called Ryan. He said he was at Blockbuster. So I went in there and found him. We rented a movie called Blackball. It was about a young guy who breaks into the British Bowls scene that is dominated by old high-class people. It is by National Lampoon. It was okay, but I understand why it never had a huge following. Ryan has a membership at Blockbuster where he can rent as many movies as he wants for a flat fee.

We went back to Blockbuster and got Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. I also bought a couple movies that were on sale. I got Saw, Anchoman, and two other movies. We grabbed a pizza from Little Caesars this time through. I was still waiting for a call from Peter but none were coming and by now it was after five pm.

We started to watch Harold and Kumar when I got a call from Ben. He was going to have a poker game and wanted to know if Ryan and I wanted to come. I did but Ryan didn’t. I didn’t want to leave Ryan, but I wanted to go. I tried to get him to go but he was refusing. He is like a bump on the log. If he does not *think* he will have fun he will not do it. It limits some of the things we can do together. So after much coaxing I got him to go. I was surprised because normally he will not change his mind about that stuff.

So we stopped the movie where it was and went to Bens. We were only going to be there for a couple hours. It turned into about four hours. We started by playing tournament style Texas Hold’em. Then when enough people were eliminated we played Apples to Apples. It is a real fun card game I had never heard of until tonight. Ben also got Ryan and I in the helmet club. When I get a copy of the pic I will post it. It is terrible!

After the tournament was over we started to play four-five-six. I played that for a few hours. Everyone was really liking the game. At one point Ben was up more then twenty bucks. I did a twenty dollar bet. Ben “aced-away”. His girlfriend got really mad. We joked about Ben sleeping on the couch because of that.

Later on Ryan and I left and finished watching Harold and Kumar. I laughed a whole bunch more. I took off after the movie and went home. I watched TV for a while before finally finding my way to bed.

As it turns out Peter never called. I am glad I did not sit around waiting for him to call me. It seems that he is really flaky. I am not sure what the issue is with him, but I have to believe there is still something there.

Jello Shots

When I got to work Terry and Shawn were having a smoke out back. We were talking about my ride along. Terry asked what I had going for the day. I told him I was done with my bug, so he told me to take off early. So I stuck around until around one pm and then left for lunch.

I hit the highway and I was on my way to Whatcom county. I was about twenty miles from Bellingham when Joe called and said he was sick and would not be going on patrol. So I turned around and headed home. I had planned on helping out my softball team at the bar on Saturday, but I would be going with Joe on Saturday, so I called Eric and he said I could come over tonight to help out in making the Jello Shots.

I got home and my parents were planning on going to the Eagles for dinner and invited me. I went down and I was not feeling all that hungry so I ate what I could and then I left to go to Seattle to Eric’s condo. My job was to pour the liquefied jello mix into the shot cups. Other put the lids on them and then Mark put them in boxes. After we were done I drove them to the bar. Mark and Gerry took them into the bar.

I was planning on meeting Dave at Billies Casino. I pulled out some money from the cash machine and started to play. The Four-card poker table was full. I played some PaiGow to start out. I was doing well, then the dealers changed and I started to lose. So I went to a blackjack table. I got a couple blackjacks in a row then the shoe changed and I went down hill.

I moved to four-card poker because the table had some spaces on it. I played for a while and was doing well. Then I got a straight-flush. That was a forty-to-one odds on my five dollar bet. Plus another twenty-to-one odds on a second five dollar bet. So I won more than three hundred dollars in the one hand, because I also got paid fifteen buck on the final bet. Dave and I were given another comp for a meal. So we decided to quit after a little while. I cashed in and I was up three-sixty. We got dinner. Then as I figured we would be going Dave suggested we play some more.

We went over to the four-card poker table again. I sat in the first position and I sat at an angle because there were two ten-six-seven’s playing pool. I keep watching the ten-six-seven’s and I was unable to concentrate on the cards. Finally they left and I got to playing. I was doing well for a while and then I could not get a hand. So finally I told Dave I was done. I walked out with another forty bucks for a total winnings of four hundred bucks on the night.