Hitting the Road with Cooper

This afternoon I was responding on fire calls with Victor. We went to do some work of cleaning up around an hydrant on Derby street. As we were finishing up we got called to an EMS call. En route to that we got diverted to a HazMat call on Campus. We set up command and then passed it along to the ambulance that came in. We made entry and assessed the problem. It was minor. EH&S; from WSU came to clean it up. We cleared and went back to the station.

I was going to go to a Pre-Law get together on campus, but I then got brought back on a car accident. By the time that was done it was so late I decided to start to get ready for working tonight with Cooper at the SO.

I met up with Cooper around five-thirty pm. We went to Clarkston on follow-up. After Clarkston we went to Pullman and met up with some of the other local cops. We had some dinner and talked shop. We left and hit the road.

I really liked working with Cooper. It was great to see him in action. Sometimes we would stop someone and he would ask me why we were stopping them. I told him what the reason was. It was good to have him quiz me along the way. I was doing good with his questions.

We made contact with a couple really drunk students. After I worked with one of them we were concerned for the safety of the person and called for EMS evaluation. Later we saw two students walking in the middle of the road. We made contact with them as well.

I didn’t write any tickets tonight. I did get one criminal cite. I worked until about three in the morning. I was on my way home when he got called to a rollover accident. I missed out on that by fifteen minutes. But it was okay, because I had to be up early in the morning.

I Hate the Waiting

I was down at station one. Turpin saw me and walked up to me and said “we need to talk.” I always hate that kind of thing, because you don’t know what it is. So the rest of the day I had to stew on what he wanted to talk about.

Chia and I went to Tam’s Place for some breakfast. It was nice to get out and chat with him for a while. We left and I took my motorhome to Moscow to get a new vent for it. They were out. I did get some food at WinCo as I wanted to.

I went to the station a while later and Victor and I went painting a couple hydrants and cleaning up some shrubbery around them. We got the rescue back and washed up before being done with it.

I went in to talk with Turpin. I was nervous about the conversation because it is never a good thing when someone says “we need to talk.”

The gist of the conversation is some of the reserves think that I am not playing well with them and I need to work on that, but I wasn’t told what the exact problem was or examples of things I have done wrong. I am being asked to change but not being told what to change.

There is a perception that I am on an ivory tower. Also that I micro-manage. I don’t like being thought of as someone who does either of those things. I hate the idea of being a micro-manager. Turpin gave me some ideas, in general, of what I can do. More or less he said that I will have to let some guys fail at their attempt to complete a task so they can see that it doesn’t work. I wouldn’t let someone fail in a critical situation, but in the daily routine things. It is the way they learn. I am taking from that point that people think that I am giving out tasks and telling them how to fulfill the task rather then letting them do it their way. Point taken.

That is also what might make people feel that I am believe that I am better than them. I have seen some people have a chip on their shoulder over me. The sounds conceded, but it is true. I am not sure where that is coming from. I never have pretended to be better than the other guys or to hate them, but for some reason, that is the feeling some guys have. It is possible that a couple people have fed it to others. But the issue is one I have to deal with. I have to make sure people don’t feel that one. I really don’t want people to feel that way about me. I would like to get along with my co-workers. I just hope that can be done.

Parts of me though feels like if someone has a problem with me that should deal with me man to man. They shouldn’t go to the chief and tell him. That is not using the chain-of-command. That is not dealing with the issue. That is causing more problems and drama. Well, there is nothing I can do about that. I just need to be who I am and keep doing a good job. Maybe over time people will get to know me and they will be willing to accept me for who I am.

Job Interview

I had a job interview today in Moscow. It was for the same place I have interviewed for in the past as well.

I spent some time reading up on T-SQL and normalization of databases to be ready. I knew they would ask those questions. When they asked about normalization I threw in something that I had just read. Which included the fact that normalization helps to eliminate insert and deletion anomalies. They guys said that was the best answer he has had on that question. He said no one ever bring up that important point. I was happy about that.

The interview took about an hour and a half total. I thought I did okay in some areas and I was weak in other areas. I am not sure if I will be called back for a second interview. I am hopeful though.

When that was done I met up with BKoe to have dinner at AppleBees. We were there for a little over an hour talking about law enforcement.

Fire Training House

I went to Colfax Fire for training today. We had a training where we had to crawl around the training house. I went in with a new guy. We had to crawl in and do a wall search to find the area of the fire and spray some water. Then we continued the search without the hose and went through some obstacles. I had not been in there before so it was all new to me. We finished by exiting through a window and down a ladder. It was a good training.

We finished by washing a couple rigs and getting all the hose reloaded.

Last Night With Brown

Today it appeared our training was going to be cancelled because Brown called in sick. But with the training subject, yearly sign-offs, I didn’t see why it needed to be cancelled. I spoke with Brown and found it wasn’t supposed to be cancelled. So we had it go. I also told Brown what I had planned. He liked it. I also let him know how the guys were looking forward to going out with him tonight after training. He said he had been getting well enough to come to training.

We were doing some hose pulling drills. I set it up to be some races between teams to pull a line and spray water to knock over several cones that were set up. The idea was to be able to pull the hose, get water, and spray down the cones, then break down the hose and have it rolled after than the other teams. The training went well. Brown talked to the group and set up the purpose of what we were doing.

After training we went to Zeppoz. There was several people from the two shifts not working. A. Wilcox also showed up. We had a couple rounds to toast Brown and give him good luck on his new job over in King County. It was a good time with everyone and it was a nice time to say our goodbyes to Brown.

Robinson was trying to tell a story about how he got his truck. As he was telling his story we kept interrupting him. He was getting frustrated. We were laughing hard. He was pretty intoxicated so it made it all the more fun. It took nearly forty-five minutes to tell the whole thing. Then at one point he told the whole story in about twenty seconds. We all asked why it took so long to tell the other version.

IM Softball Week Three

This is week three of softball for IM’s. We are playing our final two regular season games. We are two and two. We are coming off a horrible week of games. The first game was a FFT. So we spent time doing some BP until it was time for our second game.

That game went a lot better than last week. We scored eight runs in the first inning and never looked back. We had three innings of hitting and we scored sixteen runs total. This puts us at four and two. The worry is that with how we played against the teams in week two we might not be able to compete in the competitive playoff bracket. I was hoping to have a team good enough to be there. But really we appeared to be an okay team. Only time will tell where we end up.

Bushwood Plays Again

This afternoon I was playing golf with Ben and his Dad. Dustin, a friend of Ben’s was also playing. It was in the Turf Club tournament at the Palouse Ridge Golf Course. It was only my second time to play there. I showed up about two o’clock meeting up with Ben, and Lewis, his Dad. Dustin was also there. I hit more than two-hundred and fifty practice balls.

A little while after the practice we hit the course. I was in the cart with Dustin. He is a ten-six-seven. I was surprised to see that he is now married. He hits the ball pretty well. I wasn’t good on the drives. But we had to use three drives from each person. My drives were not always that great, but we picked ones that would not hurt the team to much.

I was hot on my short game. The problem is that we would use after we all hit a drive we would pick one. From that point each person hit his own ball to the hole. I didn’t do too poorly. I was able to keep up in score. In fact my putting made me lead some of the holes. I had some very nice putts including two there were around thirty footers for birdies. It felt great.

The wind was incredible. It was blowing pretty good all day. It kept everybody’s game in check. We had to battle the wind from every direction.

Hanging out with Ben was so much fun. Ben is a super great guy. Always a very nice person, plus he is ten-six-seven. He is in great shape and plays gold very well. I wish he still lived around here because he is great in softball too. I could use him on my team.

Last Day Working for NU/MH

Today was my final day at MH. I have been with them since they acquired NU nineteen months ago. There is not enough work for me and they needed to downsize. I made it through several downsizings at NU over the years. I didn’t do much today because there were no projects for me to get done.

I ran a couple calls for Pullman Fire. We started with an echo call. Unfortunately things didn’t turn out well. The coroner was called. I went back to the scene to help with the removal. We had a couple car wrecks and a medical call. When I was done with the fire calls I went home and sent a final E-mail to the people at MH. Many of them didn’t know me, so it is lost on them I am sure.

I worked the sheriff’s office today. I was out with Keller. I drove the whole night. We didn’t have a lot go on. I did take two cases that I have to do the reports on. I also got a couple speeders while I was out there. It was a pretty quiet night over all. But it usually is when I am on duty. The night ended with helping Colfax with a deer that had been hit by a car. It was still alive but in the city, so we had to get it out of town to put it down.

Good Service from Jim

I went to put out the trash this morning for pickup. But I found they had already come by. But when I was outside I noticed my trash can was not in its normal place. i took a look and it was empty. I figured that Jim had done it. He works with me at Colfax Fire. I sent him a text and it turns out he had. I said thank you. Then I wrote a letter to his company to let them know how happy I am with his service.

I got a call about helping out with the fire extinguisher class. I got my uniform on and went to the fire station. We went to the tower and taught two classes. During the classes we let everyone fire off an extinguisher and practice putting out a fire that we would light up.

We got done and everything taken care of just in time for me to head to Colfax for the monthly Coroner’s meeting. The meeting was pretty short. But I helped Pete with some of the photos and we talked about upcoming work opportunities for me.

Three Hats Today

I ran a call with Pullman fire early this afternoon. We took it all the way to the hospital. When I got home I heard a call go out in Albion. So I went out there for that call. Due to manpower needs we called for D-Twelve to come and help. When they got there we got things taken care of. Parrish made a comment about my hat changing.

This evening I worked the sheriff’s office. I went out with Zehm. We had a call for some goats on the road near Palouse. We took care of it, it turned out they were not located. After some looking we found a neighbor who said he chased them back where they went.

I ran some traffic on some county roads. I got a couple tickets out of it. I also learned some more from Zehm. It seems like I learn things from Zehm. This time it wasn’t in reference to something where I messed up. He told me about asking people if they looked at their speedometer.

The night was pretty uneventful again. It seems to be uneventful whenever I go out on patrol. I seem to have the white cloud around me.

Missed Fire Training in Colfax

Tonight I was supposed to go to fire training in Colfax. But due to things around the fire station I decided that it would be best if I didn’t. We had an ambulance leave town for an emergency transfer. Without any people for callback we were down to four in the system between the two stations and the six reserves on the night.

It turned out to be a quiet night and we didn’t have any calls while they were gone, so things turned out okay.

Blake the Teacher

This evening for fire training we were working on Cardiac emergencies. Blake was teaching the class. He gave me some money and asked that I go and get some supplies for rootbeer floats. I got those things back and we all has floats while doing the training. Blake is a good lecturer. I enjoy his classes.

After training a group of us went to Zeppoz for after training dinner and beverages. It was a good time. Blake and I spent a lot of time talking about training and issues surrounding people and getting them excited about training.

Everyone left around midnight to head home. It was great to talk with Blake. He is a good person and I really like working with him. I have worked shifts with him in the past and I also did some hospital transfers with him.

Two Losses in IM’s tonight

The day started with working on my report for the coroner’s office. While there I saw Ron updated his station on facebook to say he had some chili on the stove and invited people over to watch football. I went over to his place and had some chili and watched football until just after one. Then I went to the SO to work on my case reports for my arrests this weekend as well as the tickets.

I got the reports done first and started to get the tickets written up. When Cooper got there he reviewed one of my reports and he had some suggestions and things that I left out that needed to be added in. But because it was close to game time I went home and got my softball uniform on.

Ryan came down from Spokane to play softball. We had about thirteen people show up, but we were missing a key outfielder. So I have to put our right-fielder into left field. We played a team that was hitting the ball well and was killing the outfield. At first they played deep and the balls dropped in. Later we were playing in and they started to hit some bombs. We were not hitting the ball well and quickly got way behind.

Bruce let me know they were using a USSSA bat which was illegal in ASA play. We brought it up, but it was very late in the game and the damage was done. They were mad at us and started to chip at us.

When the game was done they had one. We shook hands, but three guys from their team wouldn’t come out and shake our hands. They were still mad at us from last season when we knocked them out of the playoffs.

The second game the team was using an illegal bat. We brought it up, but the IM office was using an old list of illegal bats. They said the bat was okay to use. We let them know they were using an old list, but there wasn’t anything we could do about it.

We lost that game too. When the day was done I was disappointed that we lost both games. I also felt like we were being a bunch of whiners about the bats too. I thought the bat shouldn’t matter because we should have been hitting better than we had been anyway.

After the game Ryan and I went to Cougar Country to get some dinner and ate it at my place. We watched some TV and hung out talking about Ryan’s future job prospects.

At about midnight I went to the SO to complete my reports. After the re-write Cooper looked over it and said it was better. I got both completed and turned in. It was a little after two in the morning when I got home.

Come From Behind Victory

This morning I got up early to help with making the meal for the football game today. I got to the fire station and helped with the final aspects of the meal. I was sort of tired from not getting a lot of sleep last night.

We had burritos. It was a good meal. Then we made our way to the stadium. I was working North One. It was a slow and boring game, quite frankly. I was not impressed with the ability of the defense to stop SMU. The offense was lackluster. It just was ugly. By the fourth quarter a lot of the people had left the game. But the Cougs had run two interceptions back for touchdowns.

Then with minutes to go in the game the Cougs got the ball back and had a chance to tie it up. By this time more people started to come back to the stadium. Soon the Cougs scored and got the PAT. Now we are tied and it went to overtime. On the first play SMU threw an interception in the endzone.

We went out there and ran the ball a couple times. A fieldgoal was attempted and made. We won the game and a lot of fans ran on the field. They were excited about the come-from-behind victory. It was funny to think we would storm the field after beating SMU, but I think the way we won caused great excitement.

When the game was done we went back to the station and got everything taken care of.

I went home and decided to lay down on my bed for a while. Without a doubt I knew I would fall asleep. I did and didn’t wake up until five in the morning. I was tired.

Working with Jordan

Today I went on a couple EMS calls with Pullman. After the calls were done I went to lunch with Victor. We ended with a trip to Pizza Pipeline for lunch.

Tonight I was working the road with Jordan. I was having a good time. We first went on a call to Albion. Then we went to Pullman where we were going to have dinner, but we had to run back to Colfax instead. We ran some traffic on SR Twenty-Six waiting for our fellow officers to get to Colfax to have some dinner at Zips.

When dinner was on we worked the road some more. I had one car that refused to pull over for nearly two miles. Finally we got the car pulled over.

We worked our way to Pullman. We worked by the gyms on foot. I was able to get a couple MIP’s. We were there about about two hours. Then we went back to the SO and I dropped off Jordan and went home myself. I had to be up for the football game tomorrow.

SWAT Training

I was helping with the with SWAT training today. I was a bad guy guarding my marijuana grow operation. My job was to walk around the front of a barn in the middle of nowhere waiting for the SWAT team to try to get me. I had a gun and I was told if I chose to use it during the exercise I would probably be shot, so it was up to me.

It took a while for the to get where I was due to the amount of ground they had to cover to get to where I was. They got to me and made the arrest with no one getting hurt.

I left to get back to Pullman for being on call for the fire department. We had a meeting that I was going to hold I wanted to cover several topics to make sure everyone was on the same page now that I am back as a reserve. The meeting took just under two hours because we discussed a couple of the topics.

When the training was done I went home. I was on the engine tonight. It was a quiet night until about five in the morning when we had a fire alarm to respond to.

Coming out to Trailbuddy

This afternoon I decided it was time to get my rig washed. It was all cleaned up and looking nice. I went to my bedroom when I heard my coroner’s pager beep. I was the guy on call and I forgot to carry my pager. I looked and the call was only about ten minutes old.

I called Whitcom and got sent out to a house near St. John. It took me about four hours to do the investigation. Due to the death my planned movie night had to get cancelled. That sucked.

A guy I knew back in the day found me on facebook recently. I always liked him. I thought he was a ten-six-seven, but back in those days I really tried to ignore my homosexual thoughts and I suppressed it as much as possible. It was back at that time that I had been with a girl. Unfortunately, that girl also was his girlfriend. We sort of had a love triangle going, but I was with the wrong person in the love triangle.

We had been writing back and forth lately, and I decided to come out to him. This is what I wrote to him:

It has been a long time since it happened, but I still feel bad about betraying your trust like I did.

This is sort of weird, but I was having internal struggles back when we knew each other. I tried to hide from who I was, who I knew I was, but I still knew that there was nothing I could do about it. I totally ignored it back then. I even tried to pretend that it wasn’t true. I sort of believed that I could wish it away. But it wasn’t possible. Even though I had been with a girl, I wasn’t physically attracted to her.

It wasn’t until I got older that I started to accept the fact that I am a gay man. I was very uncomfortable with it. I am still uncomfortable with it, but as time has gone on, I have gotten a little bit more comfortable. There was a time I wouldn’t even admit it to myself. Now I finally can admit it to myself and I can tell some people.

I am not even fully out to people. I haven’t told a lot of people. Most of my old friends are still in the dark about it. Even some of my newer friends are in the dark about it. It seems like most people I know tend to find out from other people. I have actually only outed myself to a relatively small number of people. You can count yourself as one of those people now.

He said that he was pretty surprised by my coming out to him. He said if I was worried about him passing judgment on me, that I shouldn’t worry because he will not do so.

Later I was looking at the site fmylife. It has all sorts of people who write about something that just sucks about their life. I saw this one and laughed very hard:

Today, I realized that when my new roommate said we could both use the condoms he bought, he didn’t mean separately. FML

Code Take Over

This morning I had a meeting with the new station committee at the fire station. While I was down there I got a phone call from MH. The guy said “What did you do?”. I didn’t know what he was talking about. Then he said that he was asked to get my code and do some changes for something we have been working on. It is something that I don’t believe is wrong on our end. I did what I was supposed to, but because some things were not getting into the database it was assumed to be on my end. So they want this other guy to do it. I told him I would get him the code.

I sent him a copy of the code. I was at lunch when I got a call from him saying it was older code. I let him know I was at lunch and would fix it as soon as I got home. I realized I did send him some older code, so I zipped up the new stuff and sent it his way.

I was supposed to go to Colfax Fire training today, but due to some issues on my shift I decided to stay in town. I went to the station at six o’clock to do the rig checks. We also planned on going to do the fire drills on campus. Turpin let me do the whole thing with his help. We got the building evacuated after I notified dispatch. Then I did the talk with the residence hall staff. We did some walk arounds of the building and looked at the fire safety items in the building. Then we talked about vehicle placement and tools we might use in various fire situations.

The Rescue crew took a dinner break together then we went to the second building we were going an alarm in. I did the whole thing all by myself again. We also did some more fire walkaround and talked about the fire safety systems they had through out the building. It was a good night of training.

We had one call in the wee hours on the morning. One guy on rescue didn’t make the call. So when I got home I called him up to make sure his pager was on and working.

New Safety Committee Member

Today we had our quarterly safety committee meeting. I am the new member representing the reserves. We go over the safety concerns, any incidents and exposures that happened that quarter. One of those incidents was mine. It was a horrible day for me while on the ambulance. I wrote about that a while back. They didn’t seem to think it was a huge deal, but for me it was and still is a big deal. I was so embarrassed over it.

When the meeting was done I did some stuff at the house including E-mailing back and forth with a guy who needs a web developer. I found that he wanted a php guy, so I am not sure I am going to be the guy he needs.

Fire training tonight was aerial operations and stand pipes. Due to my ankling being incredibly painful I was put on engineer status for the training. It was good because it gave me some pump time. We started at station thirty-one. After the Powerpoint we went to the tower. One guy had some issues he wanted to talk about with some of the things that was happening on the shift. So he told me that he was mad about the fact we haven’t had a lot of participation with the Sunday rig checks. I told him I would put in a policy to correct that. Pretty much everyone will need to find coverage for the rig checks even if they are taking an Ollie day.

He also was concerned over the way I had the schedule set up with who was on the engine with him as the officer. He wanted someone with more Pullman fire experience. I had someone who had been a firefighter for a while somewhere else. So I made some changes to the schedule. He also thought I was having a hard time adjusting to being a reserve and our role on the scene. He said on a call when we got to the scene it was clear they wanted us to wait in the rig. But I had gotten out.

I told him that I had gotten out because Thompson was not answering the radio when someone was calling him and I was letting him know he was being asked for on the radio. I let him know due to the loud engines in the area it took several attempts to let him know. Then he started to talk to me about other stuff. He and the other guy were in Rescue and they were miffed over it, but they didn’t know the whole story. So that was just someone getting mad when they didn’t know the whole story. It was one reason why I don’t like to get mad about things without knowing the facts. Making assumptions can cause unneeded bad feelings.

Him and I left and went to the training at the tower. All went good from there. The training went well. When it was done we went to Zeppoz and hung out for a while. We were there until about midnight. We got some dinner and had some beverages. It was a good night over all.

EVOC Slow Course

This morning I started with the slow EVOC course. Melcher and I were trading off with the one county car. The others had their own car. It was taking a long time between each of my runs. After my second run Melcher went a second time. Then it was decided that he would continue to do it until he was able to pass it. There was a lot of backing and it was pretty involved. As it was getting close to the time that the class was supposed to be over I was able to get into a WSU police car in order to get some practice because the other cars were still being used.

I did the course once in the WSU car and my time was good, but I hit a couple cones. I did it a second time and passed it seventeen seconds over the minimum time needed. I was the second guy to pass and I did it in the least number of runs. It was pretty cool.

We left and went to McDonald’s for lunch. We watched some football and talked war stories while there. When the training was done I went home and got my stuff ready for softball practice. I was meeting a couple of the new and old guys at the city playfields for some practice and BP. The two new infielders are both nice guys and good players. Both hit the ball well and throw it well. We are going to be a lot more solid. We were there for a couple hours total.

I went home and got ready for our first softball games. One of the infielders wasn’t sure if he was going to play with us or a different team who was trying to recruit him. He decided to play with us. That was great news for the team.

I pitched the first game and did just fine. We won the first game by one run, but we were not hitting too well. The second game was a lot more of a slaughtering. We ten-runned the other team. We started off the season two and oh.

Potlatch Softball Tournament

I played in a co-ed softball tournament in Potlatch with Zeppoz. I got up there around eight-thirty in the morning. The first game was at nine. It was a fun little tournament. It was not sanctioned so we were able to use whatever bats we wanted. But the fields was so small we really didn’t want to be hitting the ball out all the time.

I played firstbase and was the EH for the majority of the day. Between games we had some breaks where we hung out chatting and we played some cribbage. It was having a good time hanging out with the team.

We played a total of four games including the championship game that we ended up losing. So we were second place in that tournament. But I had a good time playing ball and it was a nice way to spend the afternoon.

There were no umpires so I got to be the umpire in a couple games as well. I did a good job, but one person was unhappy about my strikezone when she was hitting. Oh well.

After the games I listened to the end of the Cougar Football game. The Cougs ended up losing the game. That pretty much sucked.

I went home had some pizza and watched TV before getting to bed early enough to be up early for EVOC tomorrow morning.

Working the Palouse Fair

This morning I was up by six o’clock in the morning to head to Colfax. I got some maple bars from Chuck’s and topped off my fuel. I hit the road and made reasonable time. I got to the fairground just after eleven o’clock. I gave out the maple bars to the people there. I got my shirt and stood by at the first aid booth. We pretty much did about the same as normal when I am there. Minor things like bee stings was about all we had happen. I was there for about five hours. It was nice to hang out with the others there.

I left to go into Colfax around four in the afternoon. I got on the computer and I saw a bunch of E-mails that had been flying around all day. One was from my manage who was getting frantic about things not saving. But that wasn’t on my end. Everything I had done was fine, but for some reason he thought it was. Later in the e-mails I saw there had been a network issue that actually caused the data to not get saved. Part of me is sort of looking forward to being done there because of stuff like that.

After doing the e-mails and taking care of some of the photos in the coroner’s office I went upstairs to the SO. We have our monthly meeting tonight.

I got some paper and went to the meeting room. I took the meeting minutes. I was also the highest ranking officer there so I was in charge of running the meeting. We had one vote come before us, so I had to run the vote.

After the meeting our training was building searches. I did a with Macy. The last time we searched together I ended up getting us killed. This time I found the guy but I didn’t do it the best way possible. We also learned some tactical things about moving around the building. It was a good training.

When the training was done I typed up the meeting minutes and sent them out. I also got the hours for August typed up and put into the Excel spread sheet.

I headed home and picked up Gunner. He came over and we watched some TV together. He was here for a couple hours. It was getting close to one in the morning and I was getting tired so I took him home and I went back to the house.

Pick Up Softball Player

I have been in contact with Art about playing softball in San Diego later next month. I am a pick up player for their team. We e-mailed back and forth for a while, and then we scheduled a time to meet up. He was in Factoria so meeting with him was going to be very easy.

I stopped in Factoria on my way to Jon’s house. I talked with Art for about an half hour, first talking about my softball experience. Then he told me about his team and how they were formed. He said they are going to do some fund raisers to try to pay for the hotel room while we are down there.

I got to Jon’s and helped him hang a new TV in his bedroom. Then we headed to the Sprint store to look at some phones for the boys. We went next door to Quizno’s for dinner and then it was off to Marymoor park for softball. We were playing a double header with a team Jon played with last year. They needed some players for their final game two games. We had ten total guys with Jon and I. So we were sorely needed tonight.

In the first game we were playing it very close with the other team which was supposed to be a much better team than us. But we took it to extra innings after an incredible seventh inning. They were the home team. They tied up the game and had the winning run on third base with no outs. All they had to do was get a good flyball. The first guy popped up. The second guy had a short fly out. The third got also got an easy out stranding the game winning run. We went to extra innings, but lost when they scored one run because we couldn’t score that inning.

The second game was closer to reality. The other team mopped up against us. The scored a ton of runs and we only scored about three runs for the night. I played catcher the first game and second base the second game. I had a couple plays come my way and I made all the plays that came towards me. That made me feel good. You always want to do well when playing as a pick up player.

Riding with Dearth

The big plan for the day was to hit the roads with Dearth with the King County SO. We worked together as fire reserves. He got the job last year and this is my first ride with him.

I met up with him just before ten o’clock pm. I helped him move his equipment from his car to a backup car because his car was going into the shop for a while. He also introduced me to some of the other guys working that night with us.

We hit the road and got sent to a civil standby, but when we got to the place where we were going to meet with the RP, no one was there so we cleared and got directed to another civil situation where a renter was locked out of his place by the landlord. It took a little bit of time to deal with that problem. But it was resolved for the night.

We hit the road and did some patrol. He took me around to the places where he likes to patrol. While we were patrolling we made a couple stops on the way. He said if I find anything to let him know.

Then we got called to a person trying to break into an apartment. We got there and the guy was gone, but we had a description. They called for the dog. The dog found the person and he was arrested. We took him to the jail in Seattle. We left the jail and did a quick code run to backup the others on a suicidal person with a gun. I waited in the car. Dearth came back after they got the person out transported by ambulance for help.

We went to get some dinner and back to the station. We were sitting at the station eating when a bunch of calls in Skyway were coming out. There were only two guys working up there at the time so we went to take a call. We headed to one of the calls code. We got there with one other deputy. They dealt with the person and got him on his way.

We had one final call around four in the morning for a disturbance at an apartment complex at four in the morning. It was just some people talking very loud, but nothing more. They were told they need to keep it down.

One thing I noticed through out the night was most of the people there were contacted all had an attitude like they were being pick on by the police. They were very accusatory and claiming the police were harassing them. It was quite a difference from our county where people don’t tend to do that. I haven’t had anyone yet tell me I was harassing them or say I was picking on them.

Are We Born That Way?

I made plans to see Russell and Nick today. I got a call before I went down letting me know Russell was going to have to work, so Nick and I were going to get together.

I drove to Seattle to Nick’s condo. We walked up the street to the Honey Hole for some dinner. We ended up ordering the same sandwich. We had dinner and talked about health care and socialized government services. When we got back to Nick’s he showed me a video on YouTube that was made about health care. It compared health care to that of firefighting and other government services. I disagreed with what they said. Health care is something where taxes go to pay for one specific person where as the water system is made to serve the community as a whole.

If you say that the government should supply individuals health care, then you should argue that they should supply housing and food. Those are needed by everyone as well.

Then we spent a lot of time talking about being gay and homosexual relationships. We talked about whether someone is born gay or becomes gay. Whether that is a choice that is made the makes someone gay or the way things happen. What we both know is that we find men attractive and we find a sexual attraction to them. We can see beauty in women, but we do not have any sexual feelings for them. That is the part that doesn’t make it a choice. We don’t choose to have the sexual attraction, it is just there. But why? Was it something that was molded into us as young people or was it there from the time of birth?

Just before midnight we went to go bowling at the place where Russell works. We bowled two games. My second game I was very close to breaking two-hundred. It was great. We also sat in the casino for a while talking to Russell. He was glad we stopped by to say hello. It was great to see Russell. He is looking great.

Marine Patrol with Matt

I was tired when I got up this morning. It was raining and I thought my marine patrol shift would be cancelled. It wasn’t cancelled and I got to the Island in time to get ready and start the shift. I was working with Matt. That was great. He is a super nice guy.

We started out just waiting for the officer. He was out on the road. We were asked to go to the boat and kill the spiders and clean them up. We vacuumed to the boats, washing the windows inside and out. Then we got to spray killer and went on a killing mission. There were a lot of spiders around the boat.

We went back to the office and then left shortly after we got there to get lunch. We talked Cougar football. Matt was a starter on defense last season. I asked him about the no-shutout streak. He said we played USC to not injury the QB. The game plan was to go three-and-out all the team pretty much. We were just giving the game away.

We went back to the office and chatted with the officer for a bit before going back to the boat to wash them. After washing all the boats we went back to the office one more time. That was it for the day. We didn’t hit the water at all. Matt and I went to the lockerroom to change and we left.

I went home and just hung out watching the Trauma Life in the ER marathon and chatting on the computer with some people I know.

I Was Too Whimpy

Today is the Cougars’ season opener for football. This is the first year I have not been eager about the football season. That dates back to the loss of the no-shutout streak the Cougs had. It had dated back to eighty-four. I am bitter over that being lost, so I haven’t been able to get overly excited about this season. We did better against Stanford than last season, but I didn’t care.

I watched the Cougar game on TV until I had to leave to go to Bothell for Justin’s football game. I put in Ballard High School in the GPS. I hit the road. I got on to the five-twenty bridge. Just after the last exit I realized that I had put in Ballard instead of Bothell. So I had to go across the bridge and back to get on the correct route. Justin’s team won. Jon is the first year coach. This is the first win for the team. They were winless last season.

On the way back from Bothell I had texted back and forth with Peter. I was thinking I could meet up with him. I went to his place and we sat down and talked. Just like the times before. We talked politics. We agree on things, but we always find a way to argue our points and make fun of the other person.

I wanted to ask him point blank what happened to us back in the day. But I wasn’t able to muster up the courage to bring up the subject. I was mad at myself for being a whimp about it. I want to know the answer, but I am not sure the best way to bring it up. A couple times I wanted to ask, but I never did.

When I left I was on the way home and I was mad at myself thinking about how I could have brought it up. I think the way I can do it is to ask him, “What happened at the beginning of your sophomore year?” That will start off the conversation. I need to know how I went from someone who hung out with him daily to someone he acted like didn’t exist. We went from best friends to people who never saw each other. It was all on him though, because I still tried. He even admitted on his twenty-first birthday that he was being an “ass” to me.

How do you Say Taco in Spanish?

I arranged to hang out with Joe and Doug today. I haven’t seen Joe in a long time. I first had to run to the doctor to have him look at my MRI and give me the results. Pretty much I am going to be going in for a surgery something in November or December.

I went from there straight to Bellingham. I put in Joe’s address to the GPS and it lead me directly to his house. There was some bad traffic near Everett and it was able to get me on some surface streets and got me around all the traffic.

When I got to Joe’s place he gave me the tour of the place. It is a great house. They had it built for them. They also own several acres around it. It had lots of trees and makes you feel like you don’t have any neighbors.

Doug got home from work a little bit after I got there. We went to a Mexican place for dinner. We met up with another family couple. We had dinner and conversation. Joe was going to order another chicken taco. They were talking in Spanish a little bit. One guy said what the order would sound like in Spanish, something like “dos tacos con pollo por favor”. When that is said the word tacos stands out because it is so Americanized. So I jokingly said “What is the Spanish work for taco?” One guy at the table said that is the Spanish word. Taco is a Spanish word. He was tyring to explain that. Then everyone started to laugh and someone explained I was making a joke. They told me later on that guy is pretty much always like that.

After dinner we went to a bowling alley and bowled a couple games. I was bowling mainly in the mid one forties. It wasn’t too bad for having not any bowling practice in the last couple months. Doug beat me on two of the games. It was a fun time at the bowling alley.

When we were walking outside. While out there Joe asked if I had to get running. I said I am not in any hurry. So we walked to a bar. It was a place called Rumors. It had rainbow flags and other such decorations around the place. It was a gay bar. I had some pop and the others were having beer. We sat around a table talking about various subjects. Joe and I talked about stuff from when we were back at college including a mutual friend. I asked Joe how he know about me so long ago. Back when I was heavily closeted. He said he has great gaydar. Then he said one day when we were at the mutual friends’ house something happened that solidified it. The friend came into the kitchen shirtless. He was ten-six-seven in every way. I guess I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Joe noticed that. He said that was the thing that made him realize that he was correct about him thoughts.

After the bar closed I gave them a ride home and drove myself home.

Hanging with Keith

I went to the Three Pigs for lunch with Jon and Terry. We sat there and ate as well as talked about sports. One guy sitting in the booth next to us looked familiar. He was a younger man dressed nicely in formal work clothing. I think I have seen him at WSU in the past.

Today I was going to meet up with Keith and have dinner and watch the season finale of Rescue Me. I went to his place in Woodinville. We then went to the Redhook Brewery. We went on the tour. We got a glass and were able to have some beer as they explained about the history of the brewery and showed us around. The tour guide was energetic and good looking. One guy in the group was ten-six-seven. He looked like someone I have seen at WSU in the past, but he was from Chicago, so I doubt I had seen him before. I couldn’t stop checking him out.

Following the tour we had dinner and then went to Keith’s house. We watched Rescue Me. It was a good episode. It was left as a cliff hanger, or course. When that was done I took off. Keith gave me a hug and we made plans to have him come out to Pullman soon.

Golfing

The evening I went golfing with my brother and one of his college buddies. It has been a little while since I last swung my clubs. I could tell because I was not getting any solid hits through out the night. Some of my normally good areas were pretty poor this evening. I wasn’t able to find anything that I was able to do well.

I ended up getting par on the eighth hole, but that was pretty lucky. It was a par four and my hits were decent. I also sunk a fifteen foot putt to get the par. Other than that I shot a sixty-seven on nine. After golfing we went to dinner with the guys. They way it works is the loser pitches in the most money. The winner doesn’t have to pay anything. It cost me about forty bucks for the meal tonight.

I got home and spent the rest of the evening watching TV and surfing the web.

A Day with the Docs

I spent most of the day going to see my doctor about my ankle. He said that he wanted me to get another MRI to have a look at how everything is going inside. I got some X-Rays the doctors office. He thought a surgery could help. He also was afraid I could have some cartilage degeneration. That would be a bad thing.

Thankfully that I am not in Canada, I was able to get an MRI appointment today as well. I got the ankle looked at. I will meet with me doctor again on Friday and then I will see if surgery is in my future. If so I will probably hold off until late October or maybe closer to Christmas. It depends on how the job front looks.

Seeing AC/DC in Concert

I took the opportunity to allow myself to sleep in a little bit today. I didn’t actually get out of bed until almost ten o’clock this morning. That was when I was planning on leaving town. So I was behind schedule out the door. I got my stuff packed trying not to forget anything that I was going to need for my time away from Pullman.

Then I had to get some stuff out of my rig. But finally I had unpacked old stuff and packed my traveling stuff and was on my way to Seattle. On the way I found a group of two other cars. We were cruising along very nicely along twenty-six on our way to Vantage. We were making good time because the traffic was light. When I got to the top of Vantage hill I made a pitstop and they kept moving.

I made it to Bellevue just under four hours after I left. I went to my brothers house only to find he was still golfing. So I didn’t need to bother being in that big of a hurry. I went home and to my surprise my step-brother was there. I have not seen him in years. Him and I took different paths. I was college-bound and believe in law and order. He went the other way, high-school drop out and doing drugs. He were are years later and he is not looking great. He has gained a ton of weight and lost lots of teeth as well as has spent a lot of time in jail. Now I have spent time in jail as well, but we were on the opposite side of the bars. I was free to leave.

I put my stuff in my bedroom and waited for Jon to call me. We were going to see AC/DC tonight. I had mixed feelings about going. I wasn’t sure how much pot smoking would be going on, but I really didn’t feel like breathing in other peoples’ smoke. But I thought it would be fun to see the concert.

My two nephews were also going. There were a lot of younger kids there as well as older adults. It had a pretty good mix. There were people who looked like rockers and some who looked very run of the mill. One young man sitting two seats over from mine appeared to be have come with his father. The son looked all of eighteen. As the show went on he sang along to some of the songs, but from his outward appearance you would not have guessed he was a big rocker.

There was also several college-aged guys behind me. They were really getting into the show. One guy in particular was huge into the show. He seemed to know the words to all the songs. He was loving the show.

They band came out and had a good mix of both old and newer stuff. There was good audience participation. We even had an exposure of someone on the big screen. She was waiting for her chance because as soon as she saw they put her on the big screen, down came her top. It showed everything. The crowd went wild.

They ended the night with For Those About To Rock, We Salute You. Was a great ending song. My ears were ringing after the show. I had forgotten my earplugs like I had planned on using.

Second Place In First Annual Garden Tournament

Today was my second day of softball. We had ten guys on the nose. I started by pitching, but I was having a hard time pitching a strike. As I tried more I kept getting worse. Finally after walking the bases loaded I changed pitchers and went to play first base. I stayed there the rest of the day. My ankle was hurting pretty bad. It never got better like it normally does so I was really a gimp out there.

I was doing okay at the plate. I was hitting the ball well and taking some walks when it mattered. We won the first game beating the team we lost to last night. We destroyed them. Then we played Sports Page. We were close at first, but they took a seven run lead into the seventh inning. We were sucking it up at the plate. Then the hitting just clicked. We scored eight runs and took a one run lead into the bottom of the seventh. We held them scoreless and won the first game. So we had to play them a second time.

The second game we hit poorly again. He did have one big inning scoring around nine runs. But it wasn’t enough to take the lead. Then we gave up a big inning. We were down by eleven. We had one more chance. We scored four runs and lost the game. It was fun to come back, but it just wasn’t enough.

I went home and relaxed and worked on getting some work done around the house. I went to Cougar Country with BKoe for dinner. We sat there and chatted about stuff. Rhonda came over and talked to us for a while. Then I went to the fire station for weekly rig checks. I went to the fuel pumps with Togs after rig checks to fuel up the engine. I am going to see about getting him to be an engineer, but I don’t know if he will be around long enough to make it worth while.

I got my timecards done and went home to go to bed. I am planning on going to Seattle in the morning for my vacation.

First Show in Years

This morning I had to be up early. With the number of calls and when we got them I was running on just over three hours of sleep. I went to Pullman for the first softball game. As it turned out we had four games. The first three were round-robin. When those were done we started the double-elim tournament. The first few games were pretty ugly for us. We were not hitting the ball very well. We lost several of the games by a pretty big margin. We had a two hour break. I went to Cougar Country for some hamburgers and then drove to Moscow for our first double-elim game. We were playing a team that we should have no problem beating.

But it was not to be. We had a battle back and forth. We would score and they would answer. A couple runs at a time. Finally we had a one run lead. The other team hit a three-run shot and went up by two. We ended up losing the game. That put us in the loser bracket and playing at nine in the morning tomorrow.

I hurried back to Pullman and got my fire department uniform on. I was working the event at Beasley. It was a play, the same one I went to last night. I was working with Walker. We spent most of the time chatting about testing for different fire departments. Then I put on Transformers. We got about half way through it when the play got over.

Then it was off to my place again to change for the drag show in Moscow. I am not into drag at all. It is not my thing. But the show is sort of a gay get together. I don’t really know many gay people in the area, but I thought I would go and see what it is like. I got cleaned up and went to pick up Gunnar.

We went to the show and they were in the middle of a set. When it was done we went into the main room and sat down at a table. We spent a lot of time people-watching. There was a group of ten-six-seven’s dancing with their shirts off. It is a time for them to show off their stuff. So the scenery was good, but I had a boy there with me so I didn’t really want to not pay attention to the hotties dancing. I haven’t been to a show in many years. It was when Russel and Scotty were still in the area. It was a little different because of the venue.

We watched and talked about the various people we saw there. Some faster songs came on so he went out to dance a little bit. I watched him do that. When he got done it was very hot inside the place and he wanted to get some cool air.

We went outside and walked towards my rig. It was near the end of the show anyway so we headed home.

I went to his place to drop him off. We sat outside for about ten minutes talking about stuff. We had dated a little back in December. He wants to get back with me. So we talked about getting together again. I went home and got some dinner before I went to bed. I was pretty tired and I had to get to bed for our softball games in the morning.

I Don’t Like Musicals

I was scheduled to work the event at Beasley tonight. I also picked up the next banners for the reserve recruitment. I went to Kinko’s to get them and I went to station one and set one up on the sandwich boards. I put it out in front of the station. I also got my stuff ready for the show tonight.

I went to station two and checked on the equipment there. Then I went home and got some of my computer work taken care of.

When it gets closer to the time to go to the event I went to the station and put the events stuff together. Young comes to get me and we drive to Beasley. I watched most of the play, but it was a musical. I am not a fan of musicals at all. So I got bored of it and went into watch some TV.

After the play I was working on Rescue. It was a slow night for the most part. We had three calls spaced out enough that caused me to hardly get any sleep on the night. I have a softball tournament to play in the morning so I was going to be very tired.