Five Hour Airport Transfer

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

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

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

Fifteen Year Old Video

I worked on finishing off my Town Crier column. I got that sent in to the Daily News. I went to the rec center to work out. It has been a while and I could feel it. I was weaker, but I have to get going with it. I am going to start to do my Body for Life program again. With the academy completed I would like to get back on a good sleeping routine so I can get my workouts in.

I got a hold of Rick and I arranged to work with him. We met up at six at the SO and I went out with him. We got asked to help PPD with a case they were working. On the way we stopped at Rick’s house for dinner and I also saw some of the video for the academy that we were in together back in Ninety-Four. He son is going to get a copy created for me tonight.

We went to Albion to talk to someone involved with a case in Pullman. After that we went into Pullman. We were heading South one One-Ninety-Five. We made a stop there. Then Rick had me start driving. It was my first chance to drive.

I made my first stop out on Two-Seventy. I walked up to talk to the guy. I got his license and I thought I recognized the name, but it wasn’t until I started to talk to him. I asked where he was going. He said he was on his way home. Then I asked where he was coming from. He said work. I asked where he worked. He said the City of Pullman. I asked what he does, then he said he is a cop. That is when I realized why I knew who it was. I cleared that stop.

On the way out Two-Seventy Rick was telling me a story about what happened with him over in the academy while he was there. The point of it was that he was family. I got some fuel and we worked Two-Seventy for a while. I made several stops. I wrote one ticket for speeding. The driver was doing fourteen over.

We started to make our way back to Colfax. I got one car doing ten over. We stopped him. I radioed in saying the license plate and instead of saying Xray I said Xword twice. The dispatcher confirmed I meant Xray. I talked with the driver. He was in a newer Mustang. When we were getting back in our patrol car after clearing the call he started the car. It sounded great. I mentioned that to Rick and he agreed. I cleared the call by saying “clear of the scene.” Cooper got on the radio and said “was there an incident that I am not aware of?” He was making fun of me saying clear of the scene.

We went to Ricks house to get my video and then back to the office. I got my ticket wrote up and I went home.

Mom's Sixty-Seventh Birthday

I slept in a little bit, but not too much. I got a call from Russell and Nick. We planned on getting breakfast together. We ate at the Old European. I have only been there a couple times. It is good food. We also spent a while checking out the ten-six-sevens all over the place.

When breakfast was done we said our goodbyes and I went to the fire station to get a file that has information for me to get files from the YouTube website for Chuck.

I went home and started to do some stuff around the house. Nathan and I are getting together this evening. Before we met up I called my Mom to wish her a happy birthday. She was out to dinner with everyone over in the Seattle area.

I went in to Starbucks and met up with Nathan. We sat there talking for about two hours. We were hitting it off pretty well. He has some effeminate features and he definitely has his fruit flies aka fag hags.

We went to dinner together. We hit Quiznos. We sat there for about an hour talking some more. He is into sports and likes guns. He is not overly politically correct and he seems more along the lines of what I am looking for in a guy.

We went back to Starbucks because he rode with me to Quiznos. We sat in my rig for about forty more minutes talking. As we were talking he took my hand and we held hands. Then he reached across towards my seat and gave me a peck on the lips. He did that several more times as we sat there. We are planning on getting together again.

Mike Knows My Mo Friend

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two Late Transfers

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

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

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

Dual Transfers

I was hoping to work at the SO today, but I wasn't able to get something set up. So instead I did two transfers with Colfax. We first went to the hospital to do one to Spokane. But when we got to the hospital they were not ready, so we left to go to Spokane and get someone from up there to bring them back to Colfax. But after we got outside Steptoe we got called back to the hospital in Colfax.

We turned around and picked up the patient from Colfax. Then off to Spokane. After we got to Spokane we went to pick up another and drove back to Colfax. I was the attendant for the second patient.

Before we left to head to the hospital a rep was there selling fire related items. They had some very nice structural gloves. I asked about the kangaroo gloves. I was told they are not good because when they get wet they get really slippery. I tried on a very nice pair with some good dexterity. I bought two pair. One for each department.

I was at Colfax fire for a while longer. We were listening in to the missing kid search from near Malden. They think he may have fallen in a creek.

Later we had the coroner meeting. That lasted about two hours. We discussed recent cases and then did our schedules. I got home and wrote up the schedule and sent it off to Whitcom and updated the Google calendar with the schedule. I brought up the idea of using the calendar to the group after Annie's husband brought up the idea to me.

Another Colfax Structure Fire

I slept in today because I was up pretty late last night. I talked to Pat about the property out on SR One-Ninety-Four. He is thinking about re-listing the property and wanted to give me a chance to make an offer before he puts it on the market. I told him about the things that I have done to learn about the property and what it would take to build on it. I am going to do some more work and then we will meet to discuss it. I think the only way I will get it to work is if I work out a deal to buy it via owner financing.

Around six o'clock today a call went out for a structure fire outside of Colfax. They called for Albion and Steptoe to respond. I went to the station. I made it to the scene in Brush One.

We were there for several hours. I was able to throw some water on the fire in the mop-up mode. It was pretty much out by the time I got there in the Brush rig. I helped to clean up the scene and took the rig back to the station. I was out of there around ten o'clock.

Got An Oil Change

I was excited this morning to go to Lewiston to look at a Durango I found online the other day. It appeared to be exactly what I wanted. It was a fully-loaded SLT model. Last night, however, I noticed when I was online that it didn't have leather seats. That made me a little nervous. I figured that would be one thing I can overlook.

But when I got there I found there were other things it didn't have. Including navigation built into the radio. It has DVD, but not rear DVD. There were a lot of things like that. But the two biggies where the leather seats and navigation.

So we negotiated. I was able to get more money for my trade in. They offered to have leather seats installed. I still wanted the navigation. So we worked out a deal that we would install the radio with the navigation built in. But then I wouldn't get the leather. As it was the rig was discounted about nine-grand.

So I made the deal that the leather would get installed at the cost the dealer was going to have to pay. I would pay that. The radio would be installed and I would have the rig. So I have to wait about one week to actually pick it up. In the mean time they are letting me "borrow" my old rig until the new one is ready. So the rig I am driving actually now belongs to the dealership.

It took several hours to do this deal. I was down there for a while. But I am excited to get it. I like the new rig.

I got home and then headed down to Colfax for fire training. We were doing stuff on fire alarms and sprinkler systems. We went out and looked at sprinkler heads and wedges to get the sprinkler shut off. We also looked at the alarm panel in the station. Then we talked about all the buildings with FDC and Knox boxes in Colfax.

After training I went home and I was working on my computer when I heard Colfax get dispatched to a structure fire around eleven o'clock. After I heard the update and a request to dispatch Albion and Steptoe, I went to the station. I didn't get to the fire itself, but I did stand by the station until three in the morning.

I went to the hydrant that was set up to refill the water trucks. I was up there for about an hour helping to fill the trucks. Then they didn't need a lot of water for a while so Tim and I went to the station. I left around three in the morning.

Long Tiring Day

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

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

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

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

Patroling Twenty-Three

When I got back to Whitman County from being in Renton I went straight to the SO. I hung out for a little bit. Then I decided to go get some food for a late lunch. I was working the road tonight.

I was working with Jimmy. We started by taking Jessie to do her shooting qualifications. We went to the county range and set it up. She passed, so officially we all have passed the academy. We took her back to the SO and Jimmy and I hit the road.

We headed out SR Twenty-Three. We were stopping cars for speeding mainly. I did all the contacts. Jimmy and I switched off on the tickets. We wrote a total of eight tickets, having stopped thirteen cars for anything from poor lane travel, no use of turn signals, and mostly for speeding. We only wrote people who were doing twelve MPH or more over the speed limit. The fastest we got was someone doing twenty-one over the limit.

We worked that road until almost ten-thirty. We were going to head out Twenty-Six for a little bit. When we go to Colfax we stopped for something to eat and drink at the food mart. As we were leaving we got a call for an open nine-one-one line. We went to the scene. I talked with Jimmy about how we would handle the situation. It turned out to be nothing.

When we got back to the SO I spent the next hour doing paperwork for the tickets as well as typing up a report for the nine-one-one open line.

My Gay Day

I made my way to the Red Dragon casino for a poker tournament that my old softball teams was putting on to raise money for the team. I got to the casino about an hour early. I got signed up for the tournament and then waited around for it to start. I was disappointed that none of the older players from the team were there.

The tournament was set up that you had to qualify to move to the next round. Any money you won didn't matter, because you would restart at three-thousand chips during the next round. I didn't qualify the first time through, so they had one rebuy round. I was bleeding my money away. I was getting a lot of Queen-scrub hands. I threw a lot away. I was down to my last six hundred.

The big blind was coming at me. It was four hundred. I put it in. I had a four-eight off-suit. I had to decide if I wanted to throw in my last two-hundred and hope of the best, or wait with the two-hundred for the next round. I decided to throw it in.

The cards were coming and I ended up going head up against someone who had me dominated. The flop didn't help. But the turn gave me a small glimmer of hope. I had to have a seven hit on the river to win the hand. It had to be a seven. It was a seven! I won enough chips to allow me to survive.

I made it through that round and went onto the next round. The next round I had to make it to the top three on my table to go to the final table. But on the third hand I had a K-J off-suit. I ended up getting trip-kings. But I lost to a guy who had an ace-high straight. My tournament was done.

I stopped at Nordstroms on my way south. I was up in Mountlake for the tournament. I was on my way to downtown Seattle for Nick's birthday. I got him a gift certificate. Then I called Russell. I was invited over to hang out until the party started. Nick had many of him extended family members over at their apartment.

While there another friend of theirs came over. He was a younger guy who was very skinny. That was the story of the night. All the guys who came over were all Mo's. They were all skinny as a rail too. I recognized several of the people from their MySpace profiles. I have seen through Nick's MySpace. A lot of them were ten-six-seven.

I got to Russell's around four in the afternoon. I was there until after eleven o'clock PM. It was a huge gay fest.

Friday Night Poker at Jon's

I spent most of the day at Mom's getting some stuff set up for my insurance. I was told by my company last night via E-mail they want me to get my own medical insurance and then they would reimburse me. I had already completed the leg work, so it was mainly a matter of signing up for it.

But when I called my insurance agent I found out that I had to have the money and the paperwork turned in today. So I had to drive to downtown Seattle to turn it in directly to the office of Group Health. I had to print off the forms and get them filled out. It had to be turned in today if I wanted to have coverage starting the first of April.

When I completed that I went home and waited until it was time to head to Jon's for the poker game. It was their normal monthly game at the clubhouse. I didn't do too hot at all. I couldn't get a hand to save my life. I won about three small hands on the night. Other than that I threw my money away.

Traveling to Renton

Brandon and I met up at Tam's Place for breakfast. We both had the same thing and talked shop including about the recent shooting that happened in Pullman.

When we were done I went home and got ready to head to Seattle. I got my rig loaded and headed out. The roads were clear and the traveling was nice a fast. I found that my speedometer was off by three miles per hour. I found this out by using a GPS to watch my speed. Now I know why it seemed like I would get passed more often than I use to. Normally on any given trip I am the one passing others.

On the way I got detoured by a semi truck fire near LaCrosse. There was a road construction related detour near Othello.

When I got home I got my rig unloaded and hung out. We had pizza for dinner and I watched TV most of the night.

Spring Break Slows Work at PFD

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

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

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

Training at Colfax Fire Again

With fire training tonight I decided that I would see if I could set up a ride with Paul. We started by going to meet up with Vinny. We did a walk of one mile to see how long it would take us. This was to help with an accident investigation Vinny was doing.

Then we went to deal with a dog bite problem near Tekoa. It was a pretty quiet day with Paul. But he had some good information for me. One was that he uses the odometer. He resets it every time he passes a mile marker that ends with zero or when he starts on a new road so he can easily tell someone exactly how far he is from a known point to have people more easily be able to find him.

Fire training in Colfax was building construction.

One Big Call

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

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

Peeved Yet Again

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paybacks

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

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

First Arrest Made

I set myself up to ride with Bogenreif this evening. I got down to the department around four in the afternoon. We had the swearing in of the other new guys as well. I helped to hand out their BDU uniforms. Then they got their swearing in. I took photos of that going on.

Then Bogenreif and I hit the road. We talked about law enforcement. I worked to see how he did things and asked questions. We were told to do things the way the deputy we are with tells us to do things. So I spent most of the time listening to him and taking advice on how I should make contacts, say things, sell things, and more.

On the first stop he took the contact. Then I took the next one. We sort of switched back and forth on the contacts. I only wrote two tickets. One was for running a stop sign. When we went to pull the vehicle over the driver threw a lit cigarette out the window. I warned for the thousand dollar ticket and gave the stop sign one. The driver was thanking me for the ticket.

I also had one person who had expired registration for twelve months. I wrote for that and forgave the running of the stop sign. On the way back to the station we found someone speeding through Uniontown. We stopped him. He was suspended. I arrested him and searched him. I ended up doing a cite and release rather than taking him into the jail.

I got back to the sheriff's office and did my reports before heading home for the night.

First Day on Patrol

I was excited today because I passed my written test yesterday and I very well could be out on patrol today. I started by heading to the sheriff's office to see who was working today. I made a phone call and got myself a deputy to work with. Then it was a matter of waiting. I was very excited to get out on the road. It had been a long journey to get where I am today.

I had my uniform with me and as it was getting closer to time get sworn in I put my uniform on. A couple other guys were also getting sworn in. Craig was riding tonight with Jordan. We started with getting sworn in by the Sheriff.

Getting Sworn In

After getting sworn in I got my badge and put it on. I was getting some crap from people because I was wearing the Class A uniform. Many people prefer the BDU style or the jumpsuit uniforms. I think the Class A looks sharp. Plus I wear a leather basket weave duty belt instead of the nylon. I think that also looks nicer.

In uniform after being Sworn In

Following the swearing, Jimmy was doing a couple things at the SO before we left to hit the road. We went north on One-Ninety-Five looking for speeders. We pulled over one car, my first as a reserve deputy. I was the cover officer. I went to the car and the passenger was talking with me. The person was given a warning.

Then we got someone else speeding along. I ran that person's name through the dispatch center. From that point on I pretty much did all the radio traffic.

We headed back to Colfax and met up with a couple troopers and some other deputies for dinner at Subway. We hung out for a while and talked shop. We were going to go to Whitcom and give Jamie a paper with the names and phone numbers of the new reserves. It took nearly two hours to get there because we kept getting side tracked.

The first thing that happened was someone was doing forty-eight in a twenty-five in Colfax. We pulled over the van and I took the lead. After running him I was going to ticket him for speeding, but the ticket book was at the SO. I ended up giving him a written warning. He got lucky, but it is in the system so if he gets stopped again the fact he has been warned will be known.

When we got into Pullman we witnessed someone outright run the stoplight at Davis and Grand. We pulled over that driver and I ticketed him for failure to stop at a stop sign and for no proof of insurance.

We got to Whitcom and I gave Jamie the paper and we hung out at dispatch for a bit talking with Jamie. When we left we went up Terre View to Merman and down to Valley. We stopped someone for having an obstructed window due to the snow that was not removed. That guy got a warning.

We headed out to SR Two-Seventy for some traffic. We stopped one car for speeding. forty-eight in a thirty-five. I was going to do a warning, but when I ran the ADR I found lots of tickets. So I wrote the driver for speeding. Later we stopped someone else for doing thirteen over. I also cited the driver because I wanted to be consistent. If I ticket one, I should ticket the other person for the same speed today.

We stopped another car for no brake light and speeding, but gave that person a warning. When we were done I ended up ticketing three people and giving one warning. We had a total of ten stops. I did the contacting on most of the stops and all the radio traffic. Jimmy said if we had finished the driving course in EVOC he would let me drive because he felt I was ready for that already.

We went to the SO and I did the paperwork that goes along with writing tickets. It includes writing a short narrative and getting the tickets turned into the sergeants. I went home after having worked a successful first day.

I am Bacon!

This morning I was called by Pete about a death in Colfax. I was asked to take it, but I was working at the fire department until eight o'clock in the morning. But when I got done I would go to it. In the mean time he got Annie to go take it. I called her up later on in the morning and we made an arrangement to meet up at ten at the funeral home in Colfax.

I helped her do the exam and take lab samples. She did a fine job with what she needed to do. We both went to the coroner's office. She was working on her report. I worked on my final sections of the bookwork for the academy. I have been going through all the notes and rewriting all sorts of things into a notebook if I think that I was to be able to reference it in the future. Plus it was helping me study.

I was really tired due to the day at the fire department yesterday. I was yawning a whole bunch as I was waiting for the test time. This was the final test, either we would be reserve deputies or we would have to retake the test.

I was pretty confident, but I wanted to score well. That was the part that made me nervous. The Sheriff came over to give us some final words before the test started.

I was going through it slow at first, but then I started to bust through it. At one point when I was done I needed to get clarification. It was on question ninety-five. Macy said later on he was only on question number forty at the time.

Melcher and I turned in our tests at the same time. Then we went out and had a piece of cake from McNannay's birthday cake that the Sheriff's wife made. We talked about the test while waiting for everyone to complete their tests. Finally the last guy, Jesse Two, was done and turned in.

Before long we started to correct them. I was doing a little better than I thought. There were several questions I was not positive about. But it turned out many of them I was correct on.

In the end I scored a ninety-two. I was the highest scored tied with Melcher. As of now I am bacon! It has not quite sunk in yet. I think I will have to do my first ride to really understand this feeling, but as of right now I have passed my final test. I am going to get sworn in tomorrow and then I will be able to ride. I am going to try to set up my first ride for Thursday. Then again on Sunday.

After the test we went to the Zuu. Melcher and I bought the first round of beer and tacos. We hung out for a couple hours talking and celebrating. I finished off a pitcher of Blue Dolphins by myself.

I cannot wait to get out there on the road. It just doesn't seem real yet though.

Running our Rears Off

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

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

Studying All Day

I took the day to spend studying for the test coming up for the reserves. I went through my notes and re-wrote all the information I wanted to be able to review from time to time without having to go through all the slides.

It was a lot of work, but it was a great chance to study things along the way. Through out the day, as I studied, I would take some breaks to watch some TV to relax for a while.

Study Group

I invited the class over to my place to study for the test that we have coming up. Due to the snow our EVOC was cancelled. I thought getting together to study would be a great idea.

I have several people come over and we spent several hours getting the studying done. It was a very helpful session to ask questions and discuss some of the answers.

During the studying I opened a bag of M&Ms that Jessie gave me. Macy had several in front of him. I grabbed one. He looked down and said "Hey! I was saving that one! It was a double M&M!" Everyone at the table started to laugh so hard.

After they left I started to do some more studying. I also spent time going through my slides and choosing what information I wanted to record into my notebook for easy reference later on.

Just Doing Whatever

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

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

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

Snow Day

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

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

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

Poker Party

Today I went to Moscow to get an order placed for a plaque for the Sheriff for this years reserve academy. I have the wording on it say "With great respect and sincere appreciation, the 2009 reserve class recognizes Sheriff Myers and the Whitman County Sheriff's Office for the generosity and opportunity to serve and to protect the citizens of Whitman County."

I got called by Pete about an autopsy happening today. I went to that and was able to see what a major brain bleed looks like. I was surprised how it damages the brain. It is like using a hose to spray into the dirt. It just digs away. There was a large hole in the brain. It was very interesting to see.

Following that I went to the sheriff's office to drop off some announcements for the graduation and then went back home for the poker tournament we have tonight. Brandon and Matt were making dinner ahead of time. Heidi, Steven, Dan, BKoe, Michael, Matt, and I all played for several hours. The game finally broke down around two in the morning. I ended up losing about one dollar on the night.

Final Day of Academy Classroom

After nearly five and a half months of training tonight was the final class for the academy. We had a video for EVOC and the final test. I scored the highest on the test so I was happy about that.

Earlier I came down to Colfax. I was able to go on a call to Spokane on the ambulance. It was a pretty straight forward transfer. I spent a lot of my time talking with the patient on the way up.

After the class was done I was going to the Zuu for a celebration of the end of class. I invited everyone else to come with me. All the Pullman people ended up showing up for the celebration. We had beer and tacos. I also sang a couple songs. I got one with Peter and one with Jesse Two.

I was at the Zuu until nearly one-thirty in the morning. While we were there a lot of homoerotic joking was going on. One thing happened with Jessie. I jokingly said that I would switch for her. One of the D-Twelve guys, Neils, was there and heard me say that. He made mention that there have been rumors around D-Twelve and Eleven about me being gay, but he didn't know it was true. I sort of laughed it off. I am not too surprised that they know, but I guess I am also a little surprised.

I think that at least some of the people at Colfax have to know because I heard about one person there saying that during the wildfires last year that she found my blog and they were reading it while sitting on the fireline trying to pass the time. If they have read it, then they had to have found some of my posts that point out my gayness.

The House Designer

I spent a lot of time working on home designing on my new desktop application from Chief Architect. I have been creating a space inside of a pole building. There is a lot of work. The hard part is trying to figure out how to use the space wisely and still leave room for growth.

I also was in on a couple phone calls from the company that is buying NU. They want me to come work for them as a contractor. But it would only last six months. After that I would be gone. But I would have a large bonus. The problem is the bonus of ten grand would not cover the salary from the next six months of work I would be missing.

I chatted with my CTO to see what was up. I wanted to make sure we were on the future plans of me working for MH. That was the case, so I let him know about the contract offer. He said he would call the new company to work something out with them. So for the next couple months I will be working for them. Then I will exclusively work for MH. I am looking forward to the shift of work.

One thing that may change is the fact that they will not supply my with medical benefits. They are thinking about offering me more money to cover the benefits that I wouldn't be getting so I could get them for myself. Because it is a Canadian company dealing with American health care insurance for two people is just too much work.

I made my way to AIA to talk with them about getting insurance for myself. It looks like I will be able to find decent insurance for myself.

Home Designing

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

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

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

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