No Oral Board

This afternoon I went to the fire station and met with the new station committee about getting some plans created for a new fire station. We talked about the things we needed and sizes they need to be. There is a student from WSU who is going to help us with the plan.

I went home and got my uniform on. I went to the SO. I was going to work with Ross tonight. I also had a coroner's meeting and the plan was to have an oral board to go to first class. The coroner's meeting was shorter than normal. We covered our on call schedule. We also covered some stuff with the chaplain.

I went to the report writing room and waited for Cooper to show up for the oral board. But he was dealing with other issues on the road. While waiting a call for service came in. I was told to go handle it by the sergeant. It was a transport from the hospital to the person's home. I took care of that.

When I got back to the station Cooper asked if I was done for the night. I said no. He said then get Ross and go get him an arrested. He said if I had to go to Pullman to get an MIP to do it. We headed into Pullman and ran around looking for something. We were not able to find anything. We made a lot of stops, but there was not a lot of people moving around.

We ended the night with a stop. I could smell intoxicants. We ended up doing SFST's and the person did fine. I cut the person loose and we left Pullman. We tried hard, but were not able to find anything.

Double Autopsy Day

I went to the funeral home for an autopsy at two. After ours was done I sat in on one from Latah County. So I had a chance to see two. One was a natural death then other was a GSW. It is always good to see those to learn. We get so few that every chance to see one is good.

When I was done with the autopsy I went home and started to work on making some Lean Mean Chili. It was very good. I think I seasoned it perfectly. I added some garlic and Johnny's this time around.

I spent the evening watching some TV and surfing the net looking for motherboards for my old computer.

Christmas Vacation is Over

This morning I got my rig packed and got ready to drive to Pullman. I got to Colfax around three in the afternoon. I worked on the reserve hours for the sheriff's office. I went to Colfax Fire and hung out there for a while. Scott and I talked for a while about D-Twelve getting a Colfax Ambulance.

Later we had a coroner's meeting. Anna brought in a cake for my birthday. We went over some cases and got our coverage set up for the month of January. It was a normal two hour meeting.

When I got home I downloaded a program for my cellphone that turns it into a wireless hotspot. That way I can use my laptop when I am not at home nor near other hotspots. I hope to get it set up to use while I am patrolling.

Movie Night: The Hangover

I was supposed to be on my way to Renton today, but due to the coroner's case last night I stayed in town an extra day. I worked the coroner's case for part of the day. I went to Moscow and got a Christmas gift for BKoe. I also got myself a copy of the movie the Hangover.

I was asked by Reed to cover him on the fire department. So I invited Melcher, Rose, and Gecas over to watch the movie with me at my place. So it was an impromptu movie night. The guys came over and we watched the movie.

The only calls we got were all for a fire alarm at the Village Centre Theatres. We were dispatched there three times tonight. We only ended up responding once, but we kept getting toned out and waking me up.

Three Hats Today

This morning Melcher and I hit the road. I was working out there until five o'clock. I am on call for the fire department starting at six. We hit the road and ran some traffic on twenty-six. We met up with BKoe, KStew, and Monte for lunch at Cougar Country. We ran a fresh arrest to Colfax for BKoe. Then we went north and ran more traffic. We made a couple stops along the way. We got back to the station and I was out of there around five. I got to the station and rig checks were done.

Robinson and I hung out at the station for a couple hours. But we didn't have any calls while we were there. I went home and I was online chatting with someone on facebook when a call came in for an injured person with blood. As I got to the station I heard the person wasn't breathing and was cold. We got cancelled quickly as it turned out the person was dead.

It wasn't very long before I went to the scene as a coroner. I told Pete that I was on call for the fire department and I might need to leave if a call came in. I worked the case for a couple hours on scene and then at the funeral home. After I was done with the funeral home the tones went out for a fire alarm. I went to the station and we headed out on it. We were cancelled nearly right away. That was all we had for calls, but because of the coroner's case I didn't get to bed until late.

Happy Twenty-Fifth Pritch

This morning we had a critique for one of the two recent fires at Terrace Estates. It really didn't bring out a lot other than some communication issues and dealing with the cold.

Later on I had a transfer in the city with Chuck. I got a rescue crew to come along to help us with lifting. It was a round trip to the hospital and back to her residence.

After the transfer I had some time before I had to head off to the Rimrock Search critique. On the way down I called Chia to see what he was doing on Friday. He then said they were out with Pritch at Zeppoz for his birthday. They said I needed to come. But because I am going to the critique and on call I didn't think I would make it out.

I was near Zeppoz when that conversation took place. I popped into Zeppoz and wished Blake a happy birthday. I said hello to the other guys who were there before hitting the road for Colton.

This critique was a lot more involved than the one from this morning. We started with a slide show the Sheriff put together. Then they talked about how the search was started. Then on to things that went well. That was pretty brief. Then we talked about things that didn't go well. There was a bit of a longer list.

Several of the things they came out with were valid. One was communication problems. One was not having an ambulance or a visible designated EMS team for the searchers. Then there were a couple things that caused some grief that I was involved in. One was the use of the Spokane mountain rescue team to help with the recovery. I spoke up as to what my thoughts were. Pretty much when we are in recovery mode, there is no hurry and safety is of the utmost importance. Then there was one issue I brought up where I blocked the only pathway to get people out of the area where they searched. I got committed and I couldn't move. That caused some people to get upset because they wanted to get out of there and they were forced to wait. I explained what my mistake was and how I intended to correct it in the future. Pretty much, it was, me being the last unit out of an area like that.

When the critique was over with I think people were overall happy with the command and the decisions made. We learned a little.

I came back to Pullman. I called up another guy on the fire department to see if he would cover for me so I could go out with the guys. I was able to get coverage. I went to the hill. I met up with the two Blakes, Chia, Chuck, Timmy, and Mully at the Coug. I had two beers while there.

Later we went to ValHalla for some more action. I didn't drink anything there. Ross was working and we talked for a while before I made my way to the other guys. Chuck and I were talking about his upcoming promotion to Senior Firefighter. Chia was getting ready to go so we said goodbye to him.

After we left there we went to Mike's. While at Mike's a guy who Ben introduced me to a couple weekends ago was there. He saw me and came over to say hello and wish me a happy birthday. He is ten-six-seven and a very nice person. I enjoyed playing pool with him when we were at Mike's before. He told me to remember him when it came to softball season this Spring. I told him I would for sure.

Blake, Chuck, and I went to TLD after we left Mike's. We got a burrito to go. I went home and went to bed.

Rimrock Search Day Two

I came because of what Trevor said... See you tomorrow. After he said that I felt I had to be there. I got up and put on my stuff. I was bundled up well. I got to the command post at seven-thirty. There were more then one hundred people there. They were getting set up in groups to search specific areas. There was a morning briefing then the group leaders got a briefing and were sent out. There were a couple helicopters there as well.

It wasn't very long after the teams started to go out that a hit had been made. There was a ton of radio traffic. I knew they were on to something. Then the Sheriff called me into the command vehicle. I heard him talking to someone on the phone as he was giving them instructions to find Pete. That is when I knew they found the hunter. That was not good news, because if they are looking for Pete that meant he had died.

I went sent in as the coroner. I got to the area where he was found. He was about two-hundred-and-fifty yards below the hillside from me. The teams worked to get him back up. It was a long process. After we got to the top the searchers got into two lines and we drove between them as they paid their respects.

There was a lot happening around the basecamp. People were asking how I was doing. They got me some food. I went to Adam. We shook hands and did a hug. I thanked him for helping me out. I said my condolences to Trevor. We also shook hands and hugged. I was stopped by a family member who gave me a hug and thanked me for the work I had done.

Then it was off to the funeral home for me. I worked with Pete for a couple hours to figure out what happened. I left around four to go home and get cleaned up before I was on call for the fire department. I got some dinner and went to the station to eat it before doing our daily rig checks and Monday night training.

It was a long couple days for me with the fire department and the searching. It was a sad outcome. It was the first time I had been part of something like that. It was a huge incident and it was great to see everyone who came out to volunteer their time to help search.

I started out the day as a sheriff, then changed to a coroner, and I ended the day as a firefighter.

Feels like the Weekend

I received several responses from people about the messages I sent out to everyone. Several people responded thanking me for the messages and letting me know they felt the same way. I had stopped by the Deuce and John was there. He called me over and shook my hand. He thought what I said to him was very nice.

This afternoon I had a meeting with the other coroner's to discuss cases that we have done recently as well as covering our schedule. Both cases were mine with the help of Anna.

The meeting lasted a couple hours in all covering the cases and a couple other procedural issues that Pete wanted to cover. When it was done I went into the SO and talked with Jordan for a little while before going home.

I am the on-call coroner for half of today, so I didn't get into anything that would keep me too busy.

I was totally confused about the day of the week. It felt like a weekend day, but instead it was a Friday.

I went to the store and got some stuff to make Fanny Farmer Fudge as well as some of the orange dessert. I made up both of those things.

Getting Sick

It sucks but I am getting a little sick. I have a cough and a running nose. I don't like to be sick. It doesn't stop me, just makes me a little miserable.

I completed my coroner's report for the suicide I worked. It was the longest report I have done to date. In total it was five pages. I think it would have been preventable if one person had the whole picture. It was tragic.

I went to My Office this evening and hung out with CBass and BKoe. Richards from the FD came down as well. We watched MNF. Jeff, the owner of My Office, was there and we all talked. Jeff shared some funny stories about somethings that happened with in here in Pullman.

Richards and I played pool. We played about five games. I won three of them. I shot pool very sharp when we started, but I got worse as the night went on. I am not sure why.

Long Term Soluntion, Short Term Problem

Here it is again. This morning the pager goes off for a Bravo response, for a possible suicide in Pullman. I went to the station. It was pretty clear early on that it was done with a gun and the person was probably not going to be alive when people got there. I waited around the station until the ambulance crew returned. I found that it was a young male who ended it all.

I was tapped to investigate the death. Due to the circumstances surrounding the death. I went to the scene. It was not pleasant. The reason for the death, the method of the death, and the outcome all are frustrating to me. I didn't know this person and I probably never would have. But due to the event, now I do know who he is. I have learned a little about it. I have to shake my head at the waste of a perfectly good life. I suppose one could argue with me about this being a perfectly good life. One who is perfectly good probably wouldn't kill himself.

This bring me back to a suicide that I wrote about some time ago. It was another young male in Pullman who decided to end it all. The effects that it has on the survivors are not very good. I have heard many people talk about the people who commit suicide as being weak. They are selfish. Those comments are from people who don't fully understand the ins and outs of the situation. It is a simplistic and sarcastic answer to something that is causing someone a great deal of pain.

Unlike people who make such comments, they don't investigate those deaths. They don't get to know what is going on in that person's life. They don't really understand the situation. They cannot feel what that person is feeling and they could not ever really get into the mindset of the person who is at the point where they feel like killing themselves is the only option they have. That is utter loss of all hope. The tough thing about suicide is many times with the proper help and counseling those lives could be saved.

Jon and the boys were coming to town today. I had planned on getting some stuff done around the house before they came, but due to the suicide I spent the whole day doing the investigation. Jon got to town. I had a chance to see him for a couple minutes and then I had to leave again to complete the investigation.

When I was done I went to Cougar Country to meet with Jon and the boys. We then went to see the movie Twenty-Twelve. Logan wanted to see it. It was alright. I hadn't planned on seeing it myself, but because Jon and the boys were going, I decided to go along.

When we got back I started to work on the write up for the suicide. It is going to be a really long write up.

Another Pullman Case

I heard my scanner talking about an echo response for a person who was down. So I updated the on call coroner to give her a heads up. I also told her I was available to assist if she wanted it. It took a while from the time the ambulance cleared to when we were called in to the scene.

It was interesting due to the recent history and long term history of the person. Nothing was pointing directly to the cause, but there were a couple things told to us by neighbors that we needed to look into.

When we were done on the scene we went to the funeral home. I waited until I was asked to look at things before doing anything. The investigation took about five hours of the day. I didn't get to watch football like I had planned, but that is okay.

Heading Back to Pullman

After spending days resting and not doing much of anything I headed back to Pullman. I first went to my doctor appointment. I got a note saying I could go back to work starting on November Twelfth. I was also told I only need to wear the boot when I find it necessary for the pain.

I went to Colfax and I arrived a couple hours before the coroner's training. The training itself was a typical length of time. We covered several cases and got the schedule coverage taken care of.

When I was getting ready to leave I stopped by the front office. Dan asked how I was doing. I was chatting with him about that. Then he asked if I was the on-call coroner. I told him I wasn't. He said they deputies are out looking for a possible suicidal person. I went to the office to let Pete know. Then I went back to the front office.

Before long the pager was going off for the suicide. Pete and I went to the scene. It was a shotgun death. Those can be pretty damaging. We went to the funeral home and continued our investigation. But the time I got home it was nearly three in the morning. It was a long day when it was all set and done.

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.

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.

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

Monthly Coroner Meeting

This evening was the monthly Coroner's meeting. I was going to the fire extinguisher class, but I ended up doing a transfer to Spokane. We went to pizza at Rocky Racoco's. Ryan and Anna met us there. I got a chance to hold Zoey for a while. They asked me to be the godfather. That was great!

After we ate we went back to Pullman. I cleaned the ambulance and got ready to head to Colfax. We had pizza for dinner and talked about some cases. After everyone left Pete and I talked about my future with the Coroner's office and the chances of me being the next Coroner.

More Blog Readers

This morning I was called into a coroners case in Pullman. I was listening to the beginnings of it on the scanner because the fire department had been dispatched to it. Anna and I went to do the investigation. She took the photos and I took the lead. It was an interesting case and we spent some extra time on scene trying to sort out everything we were finding in the apartment. I also spend nearly an hour making phone calls with various people trying to get information.

When I was done with the case I went to the fire department to do the Night Out in the Park up in Palouse. It is a year event. It brings in the Red Cross, the SO, the Posse, the PFD, Palouse fire, and some local high school kids' bands.

I was manning the ambulance and talked to the kids who wanted to come by and look at it. It was a pretty easy gig compared to some of the events that we do.

Whitcom also had a booth there. One of the dispatchers said they her and one other dispatcher read my blog from time to time. She said one thing they didn't know was what I meant when I write ten-six-seven. I got that question a couple weeks ago by a friend who saw it on my blog too.

At first I wouldn't tell her what it meant. Later I let her in on it. She was hoping it was going to be more exciting than it was, but now she knows. When I have a friend or someone I work with tell me they found my blog I always ask how they found it. I don't have links to it from anything I have. You have to be told where it is, or find it via a random search. I also wonder how much of it they have read. I don't write about being gay a lot, but enough that if they read enough of it they will find out that I am gay. It is one of those things I don't advertise. I never ask if they know, just in case they didn't see the posts that include that information, but I am guessing they know. I got that impression when she asked how the ten-six-seven related to hot guys. So, yeah.

I have been writing this blog since ought-three. It is pretty interesting to go back through some of my old posts. There has been a lot of stuff that has happened to me over those years. Job changes, boyfriends, new vehicles, and becoming more comfortable with being gay and letting more of my friends in on it.

Monthly Coroner Meeting

This morning before I left the fire department we got a transfer for eight-thirty. I took it with Young. We went to get the patient. We were deciding where we were going to have lunch. He said "Where ever you want." I said "Rocky Rococo's." He said not pizza. Then I pointed out how he said anywhere and then when I suggested a place he said no. So then he said we could go there.

After we completed the transfer to Spokane we went to the pizza place. I tried to get Ryan but I was unable to reach him so he was not able to eat with me.

We went back and I worked at the house trying to get a couple things completed before it was time to go to the coroner's meeting. While I was at home I got a call to work on a computer for the TF. They had several computer issues they need worked on. I went to their office and picked up a couple computers to work on. There is one I will need to go into the office and work on.

From there I went to Colfax for the coroner's meeting. I stopped my Steve's Glass and went to look at a motorcycle. It is a Suzuki that is an enduro style motorcycle, more or less a street legal dirt bike. He wants just under two grand for it. It isn't a bad looking bike. I am thinking about it. I am not sure if I am going to do it but I very well might. I talked to Steve about the house he bought from me and the boat his son bought from me.

I went to the meeting. We covered several items and a case that was pretty interesting. It was pretty involved and we discussed it for a while. We got our schedule set up for the next month and a half as well.

When I got home I worked on one of the computers. It was a simple problem where the admin password had been forgotten. I was able to reset it and we were good to go on that one. The next one will probably be a bit harder. I am going to work on that on Sunday or Monday.

Big Photo Shoot

I have been wanting to do this for a long time, and finally I got my fire department uniform to my house so I could set it up. I wanted to take a photo of myself in each of my uniforms. Then I would put it all into one photo to make it look like I posed for the photos all at one time.

I spent some time trying to get the lighting and other set up things just right. Then I put on one uniform after another. It took a long time to go through all the uniforms. One by one I had to put it on and use the ten second delay to take three photos. Then sometimes I had to change out the badges and other brass to other uniform parts for another photos. It was a long process. But the photos all turned out well.

I then started to go through the photos and chose what post to use for what side of the photo the pic would be on. It took a lot of time to cut out the background even though I was using a solid colored background. The whole process to make the photo took about six hours.

I then had to run off to the softball game. We were playing against Spellman's team. It was crappy because we couldn't hit the ball. Some of our best hitters didn't have a hit on the night. We ended up losing after only scoring five runs. Spellman's team scored twelve in the first inning alone.

I ended the night by watching Rescue Me. It is the first episode I was able to catch in the last three weeks.

A Butt Kicking

This evening we had softball against a team from SEL. We were supposed to have ten people there. But then one was running late, and one of the other guys on my team told the other one that we didn't need him tonight and he could go home. By the time we were near game time there were only eight guys. I frantically called around and found someone who could play. We played with nine guys and it really sucked. My pitching was the worst I have ever seen.

Here is what I said on the My Office website about this game:

When we were putting together this season's team we wanted to have the fewest number of players possible in order to maximize the play time for everyone. We expected a couple events would happen in the season in order to make us need a couple subs. But so far this season we rarely have played with more than 10 players.

Today's game was no different, but today we didn't even have 10 players. That was a big detriment to us. Playing Schweitzerweizen should not have been a close game. We have a large number of sluggers and we can put a lot of runs on the board fast. Even with our talent we tend to cycle as a team. Either everyone is clicking or we're not.

Down a pitcher, Scotty Anderson pitched for the first time this season. But it was a terrible debut. Many pitches went for balls which racked up walks. Finally Nick Darling was brought in to pitch in the first inning, but the damage had already occurred. Down 9 runs My Office came back and put up six runs of their own. But that would be as close as My Office would get it.

Schweitzerweizen seemed to be hitting from the top to the bottom of the order. They were finding our gaps through out the outfield. With only three guys trying to cover the whole outfield, the ball was finding a lot of room to sneak in for a basehit.

We have a good defensive time, but over the last four games, twenty-five innings in all, we have allowed at least one run in twenty-two innings. All three innings without allowing a run was all in one game.

The season is not over yet, but My Office needs to start to post "W"'s if there is to be a chance for a league championship.

Twenty-Four Hour OT

I was going to be getting off shift when I got offered a twenty-four hour overtime shift. I was worried about missing softball and the autopsy that was scheduled for today. But I was able to go to the autopsy and the softball game was cancelled.

Pritch was working OT as well today. So we bought dinner for the shift. Bob and I were on the ambulance. The only call we got was during the autopsy of course. It was a call up on campus. We were not able to see the end of the autopsy and that is where they found the findings that showed the cause of death. Now I am only going to get to see the photos which are never as good as seeing things in person.

Overall it was a pretty quiet day. There were a couple calls in the middle of the night but they were both for the Deuce. So I never had to get up. That was good because I was pretty tired.

Change in Status at MH

I got notified recently that our benefits will be administered by simply buying them ourselves and then getting reimbursed. So I have been working on finding health, vision, dental, short and long term disability, and life insurance. I have worked with AIA for my car and house, so I thought I would go to them for this.

I am getting situated on my insurance needs. But today I also found out that I am not going to be a real employee. I am going to be a contractor, but it will be hybrid. Due to the Canadian company wanting to overhead me and the other American working for the company will be contractors. But we will have full company benefits as well as vacation, holiday, and sick time. This is an interesting change. I am also getting a small increase in pay to cover the additional taxes I will have to pay.

I went to see a CPA about my taxes. I had a brief sit down with Milt in Colfax. He is going to meet with me on Friday to cover my taxes situation. I also need to find out about my retirement options as the Four-Oh-One-K program is going to be gone too. That is probably a big one. I could do an IRA but you cannot put as much away.

After meeting with Milt I went to the Coroner's Office for our monthly meeting. We covered the cases we had recently and other discussion covering the budget situation.

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.

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.

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.

Close to Being an Engineer... Again

I spent some of the day doing some engine driving on Engine Thirty-Two. On top of that I got cleared to become an engineer without having to finish off the PL drive time first. That is something important to me. I was in a situation that I couldn't get the drive time as easy as I would have liked because of my temp status. With the the recent development I can become an engineer on my own schedule and then work on the PL as I have been. This will stop holding me back.

I went to the county and had the coroner's meeting to start with. But I didn't get a chance to talk to Pete about the things I was hoping to speak to him about. Specifically about the fact that I want to be the next Whitman County Coroner. But I want to make sure things are still on track for that. I want to keep the actual conversation on the down low so I didn't want other around for what we talked about.

Today's class was radar. It is day one of three for radar. Today it was just background and lecture. Next time we will cover more on the radar itself, and then in two Saturday's we will do some practical stuff.

Worked with a New Deputy Coroner

This morning I woke up for a minute and was changing positions on the bed when I heard my coroner's pager go off. I looked and I had a call to attend to. I got a call from one of the other new coroner's who wanted to go and work with me.

After having had my long day yesterday and the day before I was a little slow to get going out the door. It took about an hour to get to the scene. It was an unattended death. Annie and I did our investigation on the scene and then back to the funeral home. She asked questions and I spent time training her and answering questions with the way I do things. She was very thankful to have a chance to work with me. She said he learned a lot.

Then I went to the coroner's office and did my report followed by doing some clean up around the office. I organized some of the boxes and items into the proper cabinets. It took a while but it was needed.

I went to Pullman and got myself dinner at Cougar Country. I went home and watched some TV. It was relaxing to just sit and watch TV. A nice end to my weekend.

A New Run Starts Today

I got up this morning to do my workout for the next Body for Life run. For the next twelve weeks I am going to be eating right and working out. My goal is still out there. In the next twelve weeks I would like to lose thirty pounds. That is ten pounds a month. It is very doable. That is what I have averaged over my last many runs.

After work I went to Safeway to stock up on food that I need for my next run. I was getting low on food in general. I also found many other deals where I stocked up on several longer terms things like peanut butter and more.

I was going to go to training but while I was there a transfer came out. I said that I would do it. Blake and I ended up going to Spokane. I have been building a lot of overtime this month. It will help me get back on track with my finances.

When I completed the transfer I had to wash the ambulance before I went to Colfax for the Coroner's training. Cy helped me dry the ambulance. A. Wilcox stopped in as well. He said he didn't mean to forget about be during Clark's going away party. He explained what happened. He never really said sorry but I think that is what he was getting at.

I made it to Colfax for training. I got the photos for the ID cards. I also got the information for the business cards for the new Deputy Coroners. We went over some cases and I got a half rack of Diet Pepsi from Anna for my birthday. This meeting was supposed to happen on my birthday, but it kept getting cancelled due to the weather.

Six-Hour Cross State Trip

The only plan for the day was to go to the coroner meeting and drive across the state. The pass was closed in the morning, so I figured I would hit the coroner's meeting and then go home and hang out with Gunnar.

Before I was to head out of town for the coroner's meeting I got a call from Pete that the meeting was cancelled.

I was at home looking through some stuff on the computer on some news websites. That is when I saw the pass was open. So I called Gunnar and let him know I wasn't going to stay into town. He understood.

I got some pizza from Pipeline and hit the road. It was a long drive over. The snow covered the road the whole way. But I still made decent time coming over, considering the road conditions. It took six hours for me, which is about one and a half hours longer than normal.

Intriguing Coroner's Case

This mornings plan was to focus only on my NU work. I wanted to go to Safeway and buy some pop. They were having a great sale. I picked up twenty-twelve packs. Then I went to my house.

I was put on notice that there could be a coroner's case in Palouse. As it turned out there was. I went up with Anna. It turned into an interesting case. The information I was getting from the police who interviewed neighbors was not adding up to what I was seeing. So I started to put my sleuth hat on and went to work.

I was able to come up with some information that started to point to a time of death that was more inline with the condition of the body. It was pretty interesting. I had to dig around a lot of different sources in order to discover what I needed. It also helped I have my computer skills. I was able to use those in order to come up with a possible date of death.

That case took us several hours to complete. Then I had enough time to rush back to my place and get changed for my reserve class. The class itself got out early.

I was going to meet up with Clark, A. Wilcox, and the other guys from the fire department but I ended up doing some call back first. I was told I would get a message if they left Pete's. But when I got there no one else was there. I went home and sent a text message to A. Wilcox and Clark. Clark called me back saying they went to Mike's because they got cut off at Pete's. I told them that I was already home. I was pretty upset that they left me hanging.

I have always had the feeling that they really isn't anything more than a slight working relationship. Even at that, if it wasn't for the fact that I was a crew leader of theirs they would probably not talk to me at all. Since leaving the reserves I never hear from them. Many times when we are around each other during different functions or calls I pretty much have to initiate anything. This kind of stuff just proves what I was thinking all along.

Coroner Case Sidetracks Me

I was spending the day working on my spec for NU. I have a lot of work to get done and these next four days I am going to be working hard on it. It seemed that things were going along pretty well, but then my pager went off.

There was a fatal car accident down at the river. I called Anna and we responded to the scene. This is her second case, both in the same general area. This one was at the same spot we have had other fatal car accidents that were due to suicide. But during my investigation I found things that made me believe this was anything but suicide.

This one there was a lot of things at the scene that I had to look at closely and try to determine what I was seeing and why things at times didn't seem to add up correctly. After the time on the scene I went to Kimballs with Anna. I was teaching her the things we do at the funeral home. It was a pretty long night. By the time I got home and went to bed it was after two in the morning.

A Mini-Golf Comback

This morning's plans were diverted when I got a call about an unattended death in Pullman. Pete asked if I could cover it. I told him that I was able to do it. I went to the scene and did the investigation. Between that and the time at the funeral home I spent several hours. I went to my house and cleaned up and then headed to the Rec Center to get a workout in. It was an upperbody day. I wanted to shoot some hoops but I had work ahead of me.

I got home and spoke with the doctor involved with the case and then Pete. After running stuff by Pete I was completing out my report. I got a call from Peter asking if I want to play Mini-Golf. I said that I did. I met up with him, Danny, and Kevin at the Mini-Golf course on Airport Road.

The first nine I wasn't doing very well. I wasn't in last place but I was about six strokes off the lead. But the back-nine I started to make a comeback. I had a hole-in-one and when it was over with I had completed the comeback and beat Peter, who had the lead at the turn. I won by one stroke. It was a good time to hang out.

After the golfing I came home and finished off the final touches of my report before printing it off. I didn't have any plans for the rest of the evening, so I got some stuff done on the computer before heading off to bed.

Evidence Collecting

I tried to get going on stuff from work, but the server was down that I needed so I was unable to get anything going, that was very bad. I wasn't to get a jump on what I needed to get done with the spec.

I had to get down to Colfax early for the Coroner's meeting. We were meeting at four o'clock, but I got a call from Pete moving it back to five. That was okay by me. I got my uniform on and headed down to Colfax. The meeting went well.

I was able to ask Pete about a person who died that I had dealt with on an EMS call. I wanted to understand what happened in that situation, because the person didn't seem too bad off when I saw them.

Then it was off to the academy class. We started with a run. Today we did about a mile and a half plus all the push ups along the way. We also ended up having to do eighty sit ups after the run was done. So we had a pretty good workout.

The class was on evidence packaging. Everyone was given an item and materials in order to package and label evidence correctly.

Coroner Work All Day

I needed to get to the rec center and get my upper body workout from yesterday, but I got a call from Pete about an autopsy for the case that I missed part of from this weekend. I went to the funeral home to watch and learn from the autopsy.

After the autopsy I went to the rec center. I got my work out completed in about an hour. I shot some hoops. Then I went home. En route home I heard some radio traffic over Pullman's frequency. They were talking about stuff that made me believe there was a death.

Sure enough within about ten minutes of getting home I was called to a place in Pullman. So I had a coroner's case to deal with. That took some time to get there and go through everything.

I got home to complete the report and I didn't have any time to get any studying done for the academy. That is bad because it put me a day behind where I wanted to be.

I got down to Colfax. The Sheriff was there and ran us the same path that we ran the other day. We ended up getting one-hundred and seventy push ups today plus our mile run and some sit ups. With my upper body workout the push ups were a little on the hard side.

When class was done I got home and started some laundry and worked on my criminal law study guide.

Criminal Law

Today's class was criminal law. This will be the subject over the next several classes. At first there was not a lot of discussion, but as we went through the class people started to talk more and got more discussions. We were done by around five o'clock.

I went back to Pullman. I started to work on my homework. It is a one-hundred and seventy-nine question workbook for criminal law stuff. The questions are full over very long answers. Very few fill in the blank.

I decided that I would go to Cougar Country for dinner making today my free day. I already had more than I should have for lunch. I talked with Rhonda while I was there and she congratulated me for getting on the reserves.

I was going to watch a TV show, but I fell asleep around eleven o'clock. Then about two in the morning I got a call from the hospital asking if I could do a transfer for Avalon. But I wasn't able to because I was on duty for the coroner.

I found there were some missed calls on my phone and a couple messages. I found that there was a case that came in around midnight, but I never heard my phone. I was two hours late to the show. So I called Whitcom and then went to Colfax because I figured at the least I would meet up with Pete.

That is what happened at the funeral home. I explained to him what had happened. Then I followed the funeral home back to the Pullman funeral home to do some a couple of the things that we normally do at the funeral home.

I didn't get home until around four in the morning.

Goodbye to Patti

Today was the last shift with the guys who had been on the shift since I started working it. We were having several people rotate. I am staying, but we lost two guys and are getting two other guys.

I finally completed teaching the CPR class to the guys. It had been delayed several times due to calls interrupting the scheduled class time.

As a last meal we went to the Deuce and had ribs for dinner. It was great. I then went to Colfax to have the coroner's meeting and the going away dinner for Patti. We talked about some of the old times and got our schedule set up for next month. I am pretty much working every weekend day except for two of them.

Crushed in the First Home Game

After I got home from working this morning I went to bed. But within a few minutes I was getting a call from Pete. When I heard him on the phone I realized that I was going to need to get ready for the autopsy that I was going to observe. I knew that was going to help make me tired tonight. I went to the funeral home and watched the autopsy. I was able to see some findings that I had seen and understood what they meant. I had a chance to ask questions and have a better understanding about what happened.

When I got home I cleaned up and headed down to station one. I was meeting up with a reserve who bought tickets for the football game for Brandon and I. Brandon was working on getting the transportation figured out.

When I got to the station I met up with one of the guys there. I wrote something that was used to tease him. After I found out that happened, the situation has made me incredibly embarrassed because certain pieces of information about me are out to some of the newer reserves. I have tried to keep my private life and work life separate. It has worked for a long time.

I talked to him about it. We had e-mailed about it, but I wanted to speak to him about a couple things specifically. I cannot look him in the eye. It is tough to look at him at all. He said he doesn't have a problem with me. He said that he hasn't lost any respect for me but I am having a hard time with it. We never used the word gay during our conversation, but I don't have a doubt he knows about me now. I don't feel better, I think I will have a hard time being around him and the guy who was doing the teasing. Right now I am not sure who was all told and who knows about the situation, but with the way things get spread and the way rumors get built, it will probably be devastating to me. I will have a hard time around the reserves. I am not sure who knows now and as I interfaced with them today I felt very strange not knowing if they knew or not.

I went back home and met up with Brandon. We made our way to the bus stop to ride it to the game. We first went to the CUB. Then to the PD. I met up with the reserve to get my ticket. We went into the game and met up with Weese. We sat down on the twenty yard-line in the lower section. I stood the whole game. It has been a while since I have done that from the stands. Within eleven second of the game starting Cal scored a touchdown. They did not stop. People were leaving the game in the first quarter. That is a record as far as I have seen.

The Cougs got crushed. From what I heard their worst loss in history. Brandon and I went to the bus to head home. At the house we got some pizza. Watched Cops and then the movie Thank You for Smoking.

Rush to do the Paperwork

We are in the tournament for nationals, but that meant that we had to get the stuff turned in last week. Due to some issues we were given an extension, but I had to rush around today and pick up where Erik left off. I had to get some signatures and get a check. Then I scanned those things and e-mailed them to the man in charge of the tournament in Seattle.

That took more of the day than I had planned. I was going to be going to Colfax to spend time there at the fire department, but that got blown away. When I finally got everything done I did make me way to Colfax and worked on some stuff in the Coroner's office until it was time for our meeting. The meeting covered the new video camera and some recent cases. We had some dinner and set up the call schedule for September.

Then I went to Palouse to help Rudy with his computer. I was there for about four hours backing up data and trying to fix his BSOD errors. After a couple hours of trying I talked him into reinstalling everything. That took some time as well. I wasn't completely done, but I had to get going because of how late it was and the fact I had to work in the morning.

Ladders and Ventilation

This morning came sort of early, but I had a busy day ahead of me. I was going to be doing some training in the heat of the day today. I was looking forward to getting it done with, but I wasn’t sure I was going to be a fan of the heat. When I got to work I found out that we were going to go up earlier in the day to get it done to keep cooler. I was also getting engine drive time. I still need more time on the engine, but I am getting closer.

We had a call to start off with. Then it was off to station one until the ambulance was back in service. Once in service we went to the tower. I had to throw some ladders and do some ventilation. It was a good training. I had a chance to learn some techniques for vertical ventilation I hadn’t done before. I also learned a way to help get someone down from an upper floor if I were by myself. I did some tandem horizontal ventilation before we were done. It was a good training day in all.

I worked on the engineer book in the afternoon. It was pretty quiet at far as calls went. I was planning on going down to Colfax after the day working. I stopped at the station first to get my backpack with my computer. I talked to the guys I use to work with for a little over an hour before heading to Colfax.

I got to Colfax and went into the SO to drop off my paperwork from the coroner’s case from the other day. I went to the fire station after that. I hung out there for a couple hours but nothing came in. We had a city cop ask us to help with the removal of a dead deer. That was about all we did, that and watch a movie.

Bovill Day Two

I was up early again this morning on my way to Bovill. I got there around seven-thirty in the morning again. I got ready and we were playing just after eight in the morning. Our sticks were pretty cold. I wasn't cold though. I have an inside-the-park homerun plus two walks and one fly out. We lost that game and got moved to the loser bracket.

The next game was two hours later. I had myself a cheeseburger and waited around for the game. We played a second team and beat them pretty easily. We had a big inning scoring a lot of runs. I have four doubles in the game including three that were ground-rule doubles. That is because there was a ditch in right field and if you hit the ball over the head of the outfielders it would go to the ditch. I did that three times.

Between that game and our next one the sun was beating down on us. There were several ten-six-seven's walking around shirtless. It was something good to look at as I waited for the next game.

We played against a team with several players from the Pullman area. They went on to beat us pretty soundly. That was all for us. I would have liked to play some more, but it was good to get to head home.

When I got closer to Moscow I turned on my phone and found a call from Pete. He told me about a fatal car accident that happened near Clarkston last night. So I was right in my instinct that there was going to be a case last night. As it turned out though the person was taken to Lewiston before death was pronounced so it wasn't really one of our cases, but I had a feeling it was a bad car accident.

When I got home I got some dinner at Cougar Country.

Coroner Training

We didn't do any evolutions today. That was okay because the last two days left me really sweaty. Chuck and I went to Campus and spent a couple hours walking around looking at the Knox Boxes and FDC's on various buildings.

After work I went to Colfax for my coroner's training. We were talking about water deaths. Pete talked about SCUBA. We also spent time talking about the recent drowning at the Snake. We were talking about what we would expect to find.

I also got a pager for the coroner's office finally. Pete has been trying to get them for years. He finally just bought his own for us.

A Day in Colfax

I spent most of the afternoon and early evening working in the jail. I did a couple rounds along the way. I also ran control a fair amount of time. It was the first time I really had a chance to run it for a length of time.

Captain saw for the first time I was losing weight. Up until now he didn't even notice. He is probably the only one who hasn't noticed. I needed a new belt and Tom suggested that I could use his old belt. He gave it to me, but it is still a little bit too small for me. In another couple week I suppose I should be able to fit into it.

Closer to seven I went to the jail to attend the coroner's meeting. We went over a couple cases and signed up for on-call days.

Staff Meeting

I went to the first full staff meeting representing the reserves because Chapman was unable to go. It was a pretty short meeting only lasting about two hours. We covered some updated SOPs and other department information. I got home and typed up the parts that dealt with the reserves and E-mailed them to Chapman and McPherson.

I did my workout at the rec center. I didn't get up there until later than normal because of the staff meeting.

The softball game tonight was a late game. We were playing the team at the top of the standings. I didn't know that going into the game. We had eleven guys and we played very well. I used a different line-up than we had been using. We hit the ball very well. We went on to win with twelve runs. It was a good game for us.

I went out to My Office after the game and had some pop and talked with Joe who was there after his game.

I got home and out of my uniform when I got a call from Whitcom about a death. I talked to the ambulance crew and went to the scene. I did my investigation and that lasted until around three-thirty in the morning. I went to bed right when I got home because I was going to have to get up early to do drive time with Ben on the engine.

New Door Panels on the Truck

I had an appointment to see the doctor about my finger that was hurt during batting practice about two months ago. It took a while to be seen, but finally when he looked he referred me to a specialist in Lewiston. I am not sure what will come of that meeting, but I hope we can figure out how to make it better.

I went home and started to work on the door panels for my truck. I got one pulled out and started to use it for the pattern. I cut out the pattern in the wood. Then I pulled out the staples. I patched the holes in the fabric and re-stapled it to the new wood. I did that same thing for the other side.

I had gone into my house and heard something on the scanner that got me listening even closer. I came to realize quickly that we were going to probably have a coroner call out. I called Pete and told him I was interested in going to help out. I continued to work on the door as I listened to the scanner.

Soon they needed to coroner so I headed out to the scene and met up with Pete there. It was for an attempted-murder/suicide. It was out near Winona. It took an hour or two on scene and more time at the funeral home.

When I cleared there I went back to my house. I wash my uniform and got ready to respond on fire calls. We did get called out to the Greystone Apartments for a sprinkler water flow. We spent around two and a half hours using the shop vacs to clean up the standing water in many of the apartments.

First Coed Regular Season Win

This morning while I was working on doing some organization of my den I heard Pullman get dispatched to a call where the person didn't sound good. Within a couple minutes of getting on scene they asked for the coroner. I responded out there and talked with them. Then I did the investigation. That took a couple hours to complete.

I went home and finished up the one project in the den and also getting my clothes washed. There had been some question about whether we would play or not, but it turned out the sun started to shine and things were looking up.

Within an hour of getting my clothes washed I was putting on my uniform heading out to the City Playfields. We were playing against a fellow A-shift reserve. I was excited to play against him.

But it was pretty lopsided. We went on to crush the other team. I was two for three. I lead the team in batting average. I was pitching and I was having my delivery problems again. But instead of pulling myself out. I kept fighting and trying. Soon I figured out my problem and fixed my approach. I had stopped bending my knee like I use to. It had been so long since I pitched that I sort of forgot how.

Now that I have it figured out I went on to pitch two more scoreless innings. It felt great to get the problem ironed out.

A couple of us from the team went to Cougar Country after the game. I got my normal Sunday dinner has been a Rhonda Chicken sandwich, large onion rings, and a Reece's Peanut butter Cup Cyclone. While there we talked softball and other related things.

Steve was going to order some stuff for his dad and dad's friend. But a big line formed. So I suggested he call it in. He did. When he went to pick up the order the girl there said something and he started to get embarrassed. We saw that and were laughing so hard. Which made him more embarrassed.

Following dinner I went home and started to work on the report for my coroner's case I worked this morning.

Coroner Training Meeting

I took some time before the coroner meeting to work on typing up information to share with everyone else at the meeting tonight. We were going to cover the things that I learned in the week long class. It took some time to type it up and get it ready for everyone.

It took a little over an hour to give everyone the information. We also touched on the double fatal car accident.

After the meeting I went to Loren's again for another game. This time we had about six or seven people there. We played for a couple hours and I ended up winning around twenty bucks.

Death Investigation Class Day Five

Today is the final day of class. We had a lecture on photography that I was looking forward to because I want to get better at what photos are needed and ideas of ways to take the photos.

The class got done around three o'clock PM. That allowed me to get on the road and I figure I will get back to Pullman before it is horribly late.

By the time I got back to Renton and I went through the motorhome with Bill explaining how to do certain things with it, it was nearly seven o'clock. I took off, but before I got far down the I called Ryan about coming out to watch a movie. It was so late I wouldn't get there before the theatres closed. So I turned around and went back to the house.

I figure I will spend the night and then head out to Spokane in the morning.

Death Investigation Class Day Four

After class this afternoon I went to Portland with Greg again. On the way we stopped by a marina to look at some more sail boats. We checked out the various boats for a while.

We went to Powells Books again. This time we spent about an hour. I went back to the section I was at the other day. I also went through their gay sections. I was looking for something, but I didn't know what for sure. I figured I would know it when I found it. I turned out not finding anything I wanted.

After we got back to Kelso we stopped to get something to eat at Arby's. As we were walking into the hotel there was a ten-six-seven passing me by. I sometimes wonder who they are. I sometimes think about how there are millions of people in America and I will probably never see that person again. I sometimes would like to just stop and say hello. I figure if you say hello to everyone you pass, you will have said hello and "met" a lot of people, but it would be interesting to think that even with a lifetime of doing that you will not have even met one-percent of the population of America, I would bet.

Death Investigation Class Day Three

The plan for this evening was to go to an extra lecture about international mass graves and working for the UN to uncover the graves.

Right after class Greg and I went to a small town a few miles South of Kelso to look at a small sailboat he found on craigslist and wanted to see. We checked it out for a little while before making our way back to Kelso. We got some dinner and went back to the hotel.

The lecture started and went on for about two and one-half hours. It was very interesting to hear about the mass graves and why they are happening. We learned about the lengths they went through to un-Earth the graves and try to identify the people who were in the graves. He showed us a lot of photos and maps of the areas that these mass graves were at. Shared stories about who killed these people and why they were being killed.

It was pretty amazing to think about what it would be like to live in some parts of the world. Where we worry about non-life and death issues all the time, to them a fear is whether today is their last day on Earth. It can put things into perspective.

Death Investigation Class Day Two

After our class was over today Greg invited me to go out with him. I am not sure what he was thinking, but I wanted to work on some of the workbooks we had in order to get them completed. I didn't do any last night, so I wanted to get last nights' chapters and today's chapters completed. I got some of that done but it was slow going.

I finally got to bed pretty late and ended up not doing much else for the evening.

Death Investigation Class Day One

I was hoping to get the classroom early enough to choose my seat and get everything ready. After all I was a total of about fifty seconds away. But the sad part is I was still getting in the door just as the class was supposed to start.

I ended up getting a seat in the very front of the classroom. It wasn't so bad. I was sitting in front of Greg.

After the first day of class I went to Portland with Greg and a guy from Yakima county. We looked at a sailboat that Greg was interested in. We also went to a book store in downtown Portland, it was called Powell's Books.

It was a good time, but after being there for thirty minutes I made it one tint sections of this three story, one-city-block sized book store. It would take me a long time to get through it all. I ended up buying one book.

Driving to Kelso

I made my way down to Kelso today. I stopped in Puyallup to pick up a rototiller for someone in Pullman. He found it on craigslist. I put that in my mom's car and continued to Kelso. It was my first trip down there, so I wasn't sure how long it would take.

I got checked into my room and then went to Safeway. I bought some items for breakfasts and dinners. I was going to cruise around Kelso and check it out, but I opted not to do that so much.

Bummer of a Loss

This evening we had our first playoff game. With the team we are putting on the field today I have great expectations of going all the way. But it was not to be. We went out there flat with our bats. I did well getting a triple in my first at bat, but many of the others were not hitting the ball well.

The other team, not a great team, but a good team that was putting runs on the board every inning. To start the game they only had eight guys and we were not able to beat up on them. After the game was over I was so bummed out. I just didn't want to think about it. I was mad that we lost. We should not have lost.

When the game was done Ryan and I went to Cougar Country. I then had enough time to run down to Colfax for the coroner's meeting. We got our schedule set up for next month. We talked about some recent cases including some from the past dealing with the river and Rock Lake. I also got the final instructions for the training I am going to next week.

March Coroners Meeting

This evening was our coroner's meeting. I got to the office a little early and while I was waiting I went through one of the forensics books. Soon it was seven o'clock pm and no one was there. I was starting to think I didn't get the "memo". But soon Pete and Ken showed up. Patti wasn't going to be at the meeting.

We went over a couple of the cases that had happened over the last month. Then we got our call schedule set up for the next month. I am also getting ready for my week in coroner's training later in April. I already took the time off of work to do it. April is going to be a busy month for me with the two trips to Seattle I will have to make plus all the softball both for IM's, summer league, and the tournament.

I am going to try to keep up with everything.

Bad Beating in Poker

I decided today that I was going to play poker before I had to go to my softball meeting. Then I got a call about the autopsy that was going to happen today as well.

I went to Zeppoz and Loren was there. We were sending some texts earlier about playing. As it turned out we were on the same table. He was betting big pretty often trying to build a stack of money. I realized I would have to play fast in order to make it to the autopsy.

While waiting for the game to start I was talking about the poker hand I saw on TV on Friday night while working at the jail. Someone had pocket Aces. The other person had Ace-King. He pretty much had a five-percent chance of winning. The flop was Q-J-10. To give him a straight and the victory. That was amazing.

I found myself with pocket Aces. I raised a small amount. Loren went all-in. I called him. Everyone else folded out. Loren shows K-Q suited. I was a big favorite. The flop was J-10-9. Giving him the straight and the win. People remembered what we had talked about and thought it was strange to see it actually happen to me. I joked with Loren about popping his car tires. I wasn't mad at all. I was just amazed that it happened just like I saw on TV.

I went a little longer. I got my money in on a good hand and someone who was at a lesser odds of beating me, in fact beat me. So I left, but the timing was good.

I went to the funeral home for the autopsy. As always that was very interesting and it showed us what caused the death in this case.

I got out of there just before I had to be at Cougar Country for the softball team signups. No one else was there when I got there. I ate slowly and just as I was getting ready to go I saw Heidi show up. So I got a pop and hung out while she ate her dinner. She signed the form and we spent time talking about various things with Rhonda at the table with us.

Wet Lab at WSU

Today the only real plan was to go to the WSU Wet Lab. But it turned out there was a coroner's call. I talked to Patti and she invited me to come. The investigation was very interesting. I had to look at a lot of evidence around the house to figure out what was going on. It was an interesting case and I cannot wait to learn more.

Then it was off to the WSU PD. I started by getting a breath sample. That would show that I had no alcohol on board to start off with.

Blowing into the PBT to start the day

We had tequila and rum to drink. Carl and Heidi from PPD, and Dan from the PAs office were there to help out. We drank and played a game called Scene It. That was a lot of fun. Dan bought some pizza for everyone and we continued to drink. Through out the drinking part we were supposed to keep watching the BAC readings so we would get to a very specific level of intoxication. I was supposed to be at about a Point-One.

When we were done drinking we went over to the CUE building for the actual field sobriety tests. On the way there Carl was making some observation about someone who I was thinking was a ten-six-seven. I acknowledged that I did think that person was a ten-six-seven and Carl started to laugh. We got another PBT test to see how intoxicated we were. The Pullman cops who had come to help out with the tests got called out to a person not breathing.

Soon the coroner called me to see if I could take the case, but I was in no condition to do that.

Doing a HGN test

Trying to stand on one leg without falling

Doing the walk and turn event

One more shot of the walk and turn

Brandon was also there. He took some photos and watched what was going on. I have found the alcohol will cause me to lose my swear filter and I tend to allow more swear words to flow. I also noticed that I allow my homosexuality to come to the surface a little bit. But I am usually able to suppress it.

During the test though a couple of the people doing the tests on me were ten-six-seven. A couple times I almost blurted out that fact. I was able to hold on to that though.

The FST went on for a while and the people doing them were doing a good job with them. We had a debriefing after the tests. Then we all went to Rico's. I started to drink a lot of water. My highest reading I remember was a point-one-three. I was feeling very drunk. What was interesting to me was when I was at a point-oh-five I felt like I was too drunk to drive.

Carl said I should let Brandon know that I am gay. I figure as a cop now, he will hear about it through the grapevine. I don't necessarily like the fact that it just gets spread around, but I figured that Brandon is a very good friend and I wanted to let me know rather than him finding out via the grapevine.

I sat down and said to Brandon "I am gay." He asked me a couple times if I was serious. I said yes. Then we looked at Matt across the table and Matt confirmed it. Then Matt told Brandon the story where Matt found out. It was the scene where he made a joke not knowing about it. Carl and Monte had told him afterword because Matt sort of thought he had said the wrong thing around me. Carl thought it was funny. I let Matt know he didn't say anything bad.

Brandon did ask why I was telling him. I would like to chat with him a little bit more about it, but I don't want to make a big deal about it. He said he is cool as long as I don't hit on him. I said I haven't hit on him and that will not change.

While at Rico's we listened to music and talked about random stuff as people usually do while their at the bars. I was there until Matt gave me a ride home around midnight. I was tired, but I also drank more water when I went home to make sure I would not have a hang over in the morning. After all I had about fourteen shots of Hard-A between four and six o'clock PM.

Horrible Car Wreck

After my workout this morning I was at home cleaning up. I heard Colfax Fire get dispatched out to something. But I didn't hear what it was. I was going to ignore it, but I figured that I would turn on my scanner and listen to it while I was cleaning up. I just had a feeling it was a big one.

Before long I heard one of the cops on the way to the scene say there was one "possible." So I listened in closer as the units were arriving on scene. I heard the ambulance get on scene and say that there were two confirmed and to notify Paul-Sixty-Four.

I called Pete to give him a heads up. He asked if I could take the case and call Ken to help out. I was just getting finished cleaning up so I was able to run pretty quickly.

When I got to the scene it was pretty quickly obvious that it was a bad one. We wee on scene for hours and hours because we were waiting for various people to do their part of the scene.

After the scene we went to the funeral home to continue our investigation. We were starving. It was after six o'clock. Pete took us to Eddy's for dinner. We went over the findings and had dinner. Then it was back to the office for the remainder of the work on the case.

It was a very long day that I didn't expect to be half this long.

The photos shown on the news showed the car had been smashed down heavily on the driver side. The news also showed a semi truck that had busted through some guardrail and went into a field. It looked like a lot of force was in the wreck. A state trooper was quoted in the newspaper saying that it was the worst he had seen in a long time.

All is Alive

I was the on call coroner today and all quiet at the office. I also was working for the fire department. We had our final Sunday night rig checks. I worked with Clark on doing some of the checks on Rescue Thirty-Two.

The rig checks we pretty late into the evening. I was on engine tonight and it was quiet all night as well. I haven't gone on a call for a while now.

Got a New Modem

I decided to go to Moscow and just pick up a new cable modem. I was around eleven in the morning and the guy wasn't even here. I wasn't going to sit around all day waiting for him. It is a good thing because it turned out he didn't make it here until almost three.

I stopped at the cable office and switched my modem. I went and bought a piece of rope I needed to get. I also bought some goggles for swimming.

When I got the modem hooked up at home it worked and I had internet again.

I stuck around until it was time to head out to Colfax for the coroner's meeting. I got there and it was just Bill and I. We talked about some cases and the reasons why he is leaving the office. Pete and Ken showed up and we did our meeting. We really didn't go over many cases. We did get our coverage set up for the next month.

I got back to Pullman and took over being on call. It was a slow night anyway.

Bought a Vending Machine

After my workout this morning I went to the surplus sale. I needed to buy a computer for running Windows Home Server. I read about vending machines they had. I looked them up online but didn't find anything about these models. I had no idea how expensive it would be. I talked to someone ahead of time to figure out how the auction worked. What I found out was that I could get one item rather than all six of them. I looked them over several times. I found one I liked.

Finally they got to that part in the auction. The auctioneer started at fifty bucks for all of them. Then he came down in price. Soon he said how about "by choice". He then started at ten bucks. Then five bucks. He then asked "is anyone even interested?" I raised my hand. He said "how much do you want to pay?" I knew the lowest price allowed is two-fifty. But I said five bucks is fine. Someone said, right afterwards, I should have said that I would take it for two-fifty.

I also bought a new file cabinet. It is a nice Steelcase model. Very solid. I have been waiting to buy one for a long time. Finally I pulled the trigger.

I went home and cleared a spot in the garage for the vending machine. I got a couple people online with me to get the vending machine. I picked up Dearth and Bien. We went to the surplus stores and loaded it and the file cabinet in my garage.

I spent some time messing around with it. I found that it is in working order. I am going to talk to the people at Colfax Fire to see if we have a spot for one. I was thinking about one down at the Deuce, but I don't know if we have room for one down there.

I finished up my report of my coroner's case from yesterday. I had to go to Colfax to turn that in and meet with Ken. He was trying to find out what it would take to record his sermons directly to the computer. I checked everything out and it will be pretty easy for him to do. I dropped off my stuff at the coroner's office and it was back to Pullman for me.

BKoe and I were going to hang out tonight. We decided that we would watch a movie or play a game. He came over to my place and we played a game he recently purchased. It was pretty fun. We played it for several hours. It was great to get a chance to hang out with him.

No CPR Teaching

I got a call this afternoon as I was eating lunch from Pete about a case in Pullman. He asked if I would take it. I went ahead and took it. It was several hours to get the whole thing investigated and find the information around the place that was needed to complete the investigation.

I had enough time to scarf down dinner and meet Bien at the fire station for a CPR class. It turned out that the class had no one sign up for it. So we just cleared and went back to The Deuce to work down there.

We did rig checks with Parrish. We spent some time talking about training issues. We only got one call while I was on duty and it was a fire call. I was hoping for something that would allow me to do EMS stuff. But no such luck.

First Case of Ought-Eight

After my final workout of the week today I planned on doing several things. Such as working on the frame, going to the women's basketball game, watching the men's basketball game, watching the Seahawks game, doing some work on the computer. I really only ended up being double booked.

I found I was on call for the coroner. But it is rare for a call. I had to go to Beasley just before noon for the women's basketball game. But before eleven I got a call from Pete. Someone died in St. John. Normally he would take the case, but he wasn't there. So I had to go up there. That meant I was going to miss part of the game and be late getting there.

I hit the road and started to head to St John. I went as quickly as possible with the road conditions as they were. I also got to listen to the Cougs. But they were not able to do anything against the Bruins. It was ugly.

I did my investigation the scene and went back to the funeral home to finish up the investigation. By this time the Cougs had made a run at winning, but were not able to pull it out of the fire. They were down by double-digits most of the game. But they came back to within three.

The Seahawks came on. I was expecting a lot when they went up by two quick touchdowns within the first few minutes. But that is as far as it would go. The Packers just kept scoring and scoring.

I was able to watch the last part of the game on TV at Beasley. I had made it home and back to Beasley at half time. I was able to put in my time there and watch the Seahawks. But it was ugly as well.

A. Wilcox is a Packers fan so I told him if they win he is sitting in the back of the engine for the rest of the year.

We were having a meeting when the tones went out for a structure fire. Turned out to be nothing. Later in the night we got toned out for another structure fire. That one also turned out to be nothing. In both cases they appeared to have been smoke detectors set off by cooking.

Looking Back on the Last Year

Jan - Joining the CISD Team - I started the evening off going to Colfax for a CISD team meeting. They were looking for new members, so I thought I would see what it is about. Now it seems that I am on the team and they are looking at having a training class come in soon to get the new people trained.

Feb - How Many Really Know? - When I got home I wrote back and forth with Matt and Monte about the call from yesterday. I told Matt that I was not offended and that he could not offend me. I asked both to keep the information secret. I also asked Monte how Tom knew about it. It was Tom who told Monte. Monte said he heard about it several years about and it was a non-issue to him. I was surprised to hear that Tom has known about it for three or four years. Monte said "remember it is a small world".

Mar - The Start of What was to Date my Best Softball Year - Then there was another play where I had to go hard to my right, more or less a dive and scoop a ball. When I came up with it I looked down at home where someone was running, but I did not think I would be able to make the play, so I held on it the ball. We were playing A Bunch of Old Guys, which use to be Don't Care. We lost to them by three runs. It sucked.

Apr - My First Shift Patrolling with the Marine Patrol - Then we went to the boat. We went through some things about the boat and then we were underway. We made a couple stops of people who were breaking the wake zones. I saw him do an inspection. Then on the next stop I did the inspection. We spent some time driving along the shore line of Medina, Hunts Point, and we were working our way to Yarrow Point.

May - A Police Officers' Funeral - At about 10:00 AM the procession started. It was long enough that as my vehicle was pulling into the parking of the Kibbie Dome the last cars were leaving Tidyman's. Along the route people were standing on the sides of the streets and police officers on Motorcycles where blocking intersections. There were people who had their hand over their heart, American Flags, signs of support, and cub scout troops along the way.

Jun - An Incredibly Fun Softball Tournament in Waitsburg - But we had an eight run lead going into the seventh inning. They were the home team because they were undefeated. In the bottom of the seventh all we had to do was to get three outs and go to the second game. But they started to hit the ball. I knew our team was hurting when after the inning the jumping back slaps that Kelly and some of the other would do turned into just back slaps. The jumping was over with. In my second to last at bat, there were two outs and I was on first base. My quads were sore and I did not want to run. But I brought up my positive mental attitude by thinking about the fact that I want this. That I had gone this far and I just have to do it.

Jul - Final Men's Game is a FFT - Tonight the records were supposed to fall, however, when the other team could not come up with enough players to fill the team, we would end up getting a FFT. That sucked because Michael B, Bill, and I were all up for records to be broken. I needed one walk to tie Skyler. That was my goal. I did not want to beat the record because it has been around for so long.

Aug - Ryan Gamble Get Married - Once that was done we were back at the hotel, the time was counting down for the wedding to start. People started to file into the Davenport hotel. The wedding started and it lasted around thirty minutes total. I was the best man and stood next to Ryan. It was neat to see the whole thing.

Sept - Bought a Lightly Used Truck - By this time in the day I realized that I did want to get the truck, but only if I got it for twenty-one-five. A while later the sales manager called back and said I could get it for twenty-one-seven, plus a full tank of fuel. I said I would do it.

Oct - Introducing the Next Coroner of Whitman County? - Pete said he was happy to hear that I would like to do it. He said he plans on not running in twenty-twelve. So that would be when I would need to run. By then some of the other guys would be a lot more trained and may want to run as well. So I figured I would talk to Pete right away and have him start to groom me to be the next coroner.

Nov - A Night of Arson's in Pullman - On our arrival to the scene I could see a five inch across Spring Street. We parked in such a way to protect the hose. We walked up to the scene. While walking up the road a man asked us if the smoke coming from his garage was a normal amount. Because he was a neighbor of the fire, he figured some of the smoke was from the fire. But it was pouring out, and I could tell it was not from the other fire.

Dec - Ankle Operation Part Two - I walked into a room with a table for me to lay on. I got up there and the anaesthesiologist started to prepare me to go under. Before I knew it I was asleep. Later I woke up not feeling well. I was being wheeled out to the recovery room. I heard one of the nurses talking to someone else, saying "you'll have to break it to him." I still don't know what they meant by that.

It is always hard to put this list together. There was the day at the jail when I found out that Poff and Capt, as well as everyone else, has known about me for years. Or November when the boys made their first trip to Pullman to see Cougar Football and Basketball. There are many other examples. As usual. If I were to do this another day I am sure some of these choices would be different, but some of them would be the same for sure.

Most of today I responded on calls at the station. But most of the time no one was showing up to go with me. So I stood by on most of them. One of the calls Gecas showed up and we went on the call.

We also got a couple calls during the evening hours. I couldn't find my pager. I looked around the house for it, I looked around the station, I checked my truck as well. I couldn't find it. I am a little worried that I lost it on the call I went on with Gecas.

I worked on getting my E-mail inbox cleaned out. It took a while to go through all the messages. I really should go through everything again and reorganize it some more. But I am probably not going to.

Coroner Christmas Party

This afternoon we had our Coroner's Christmas Party. We had a normal meeting but Pete brought in food for us to chow on during the meeting. I brought in the large car crash collage that I was putting together some time ago. While it sat in my room I got so use to it, that when I took it out of here coming into my office, there was a huge missing item. The wall looks so white in that area now.

Pete and the others really liked it. I was happy about that. Everyone looked at it, and we talked about all the cases involved with each one.

We just spent time talking about random stuff and make our schedules. It was a good time there. When it was over with I went back to Pullman. I was on call tonight, but turned out to be dead again tonight. It has been really quiet during the evenings here.

More Zeppoz poker

After only about two hours of sleep I was woken up by a phone call from Pete. There was a call waiting in the wing. I had guessed it had to do with the call we had this morning. Later on in the morning I called Pete and it turned out to be what I was thinking it was. As it turned out I had transported the same person to Spokane about ten days prior. So I was familiar with him.

In the rest of the day Wilcox, Dearth, and I responded on EMS and fire calls. The first one was a pretty bad looking accident. Turned out it wasn't much of anything when it was done. A lot of people stopped to help. I was talking to one person who was there. I got the vibes and the gaydar was going off. I found him on Facebook and sure enough he is family.

I was running really late for poker. Sign ups were at five-thirty, and it was almost that time when we got back to the station after our fourth call of the afternoon. With the heavy snow covering the road we had a long day. But now it is raining and the roads are getting all slushy.

I got to Zeppoz in time to get a seat at the table. Due to the weather, I believe, there was a limited number of players. We ended up having three full tables, but it took almost until six o'clock to get there.

A ten-six-seven who has been in all the tournaments since I started to play was there. He is not the normal blonde/blue but, he is still ten-six-seven.

Towards the end of the night I was knocked out in seventh place again. The ten-six-seven was in the final four. All of a sudden there was a small uproar at the table. I was playing a table game right next to the poker table. I turned around and saw the ten-six-seven with tears in his eyes. Someone said he would chop the pot with him. I didn't know what had happened.

Later on I found out his dad had died and he was called about it during the game.

Chatting with Brandon

I started the morning out getting an oil change for my truck. I was at home making lunch when I got a call from Brandon. He is looking at buying a gun and he was out looking at some.

Later on when I was making dinner he called again. But I was on my way to Colfax for the coroner's training. We talked about the guns he looked at. He is looking to getting a revolver.

When I was getting to Colfax the ambulance was getting ready to leave and a lot of people were showing up. I turned on my radio and heard it was a car wreck. I went to the station and watched the rescue leave. I was there for a little bit when a second ambulance was requested. I called Pete and told him what was going on. He said I could go.

It turned out that the second ambulance was needed. We were turned around, but we set up flares because we were nearly on the scene.

I got back for training in plenty of time. The training was good, we covered some recent cases. After the training was over with I went to Colfax Fire and hung out watching some TV shows with Ralph.

When CSI was over with I went home.

Spending the Day with Ken

I went to Colfax fire today because I had the day off of work and because I wanted to help Ken with his report and follow up from yesterday's case. I advised Ken on things to write in his narrative and checked it when he was done writing it.

I was also hanging out waiting for a call to come in. Before I had to leave we did have a call come in. It was a low level call. We didn't do a lot, but we did transport.

I had to head back to Pullman to work the WSU Volleyball game. It was the last game of the season. They were playing Oregon State. When we got to D street and Colorado I saw lights flashing inside Bohler Gym. I said it looked like a fire alarm. Reed said "they haven't dispatched one." Then it was dispatched. We investigated it. It was burnt popcorn. We helped to get everything reset and watched the matches.

The Cougs went on to win in five games. It was need to see.

Thanksgiving with Friends

This afternoon I met up with Russell, Denise, Beren, Sauce, and Mireum for Thanksgiving dinner. We had a great meal fixed by Denise. I was also on call for the coroner.

As it turned out I got a case around nine-thirty. I called up Ken and picked him up on my way to Endicott for the case. It was natural. This is my second case on a Thanksgiving. Last year I got one as well. Last years' was a natural crash that turned into a car running off the road.

Tonights case took Ken and I into the wee hours of the morning to investigate the whole thing. This was Ken's first real case where he was taking the lead. I had to help him out with certain parts along the way. But he did good overall.

After the case I went to Russells' to get a piece of pie. I missed the rest of the night. They thought they would still be there. But as it turned out they all left about forty minutes before I got there. I ate the pie quickly and then went home.

The Next Whitman County Coroner?

Russell needed a ride to the airport today so I had planned on giving him around there around eleven in the morning. We stopped by Sam Dial to get his watch then I dropped him off. He was thankful for the ride.

In the evening I headed to Colfax for the Coroners meeting. The softball game was cancelled tonight due to the rain, so I was able to get there on time. I was early so I was reading a book on forensics.

Everyone else showed up soon thereafter. The meeting got going. We reviewed a case that Pete is going to be going to court over. We also got our coverage set up for the next two months. I also went over the case I had on Monday.

After the meeting was over I was told Pete that I wanted to be the next coroner. I told him that I thought Patti would be the next one, but with her moving to Spokane soon and her leaving the office I figured I would like to get in to it.

Pete said he was happy to hear that I would like to do it. He said he plans on not running in twenty-twelve. So that would be when I would need to run. By then some of the other guys would be a lot more trained and may want to run as well. So I figured I would talk to Pete right away and have him start to groom me to be the next coroner.

Full Circle

This morning my pager was going off for a echo response for a CPR in progress outside of Pullman. Bien and I went to the scene. I assisted in doing chest compressions for a while on scene plus in the back of the ambulance to the hospital. I did more chest compressions at the hospital. After more than an hour since the incident starting the doctor called it in the hospital. This is the second time in Pullman since I started when I have been there in the hospital when it was called. I had the same reaction. Sadness. I was hopping we could keep fighting until we won. But we didn't.

I went back to the station when Pete called me about it. I started to do the investigation with the help of one of the new deputy coroners, Bill. We did a full investigation. When I went back to the hospital the respirator therapist gave me a look like he was surprised to see me back. I looked at him and said, matter of factly, "My brother works for the fire department." Later on when I was in the nurses area he was looking real hard at me. Later a nurse told me the respirator therapist was amazed how much me and my "brother" looked. He couldn't tell us apart.

When the case was done I went to the radio station to do my show. I had a guest coming in to talk with me about an article he wrote for the Evergreen where he supported Thompson for president. I spent nearly the whole time talking to him on the radio. At two o'clock PM the guy who was supposed to replace me never showed up. I stayed for a little bit, but I finally had to leave.

While at home I responded on more calls. One was a fire alarm. One was a car accident. One was a motorcycle accident, and finally someone who fell. I got back in time to get ready for training for tonight.

We were doing airway for OTEP tonight. It was the same class I had last month in Colfax. When the lecture was done I was able to do some evaluations on people doing their skills. It was my first time to do that since taking the EMS Evaluator class.

George thanked me for taking the role seriously and doing a good job evaluating people. When we went over the test I knew two answers we had from the Colfax class was different from what everyone agreed to in Pullman. So I looked up the answers and pointed them out to George. He said he would update everyone on the correct answers.

Second Coroner Training

Today in Colfax we had our second coroner training. We went through some more cases and handed out the equipment to everyone. We talked about the case that Ken and I had. He talked about his experiences.

I spent some time this afternoon at the fire department playing Ghost Recon with Rich and Reed. That was pretty fun. I am still driving the Bumblebee around. It was pretty hot today.

It is funny, as I drive the Bumblebee around now I am always so worried about getting in an accident. Because I realize that should I be in one, I probably will be baddly injured or killed. It is interesting that I think about that the whole time I am in it as we drive down the highway to and from Colfax.

Fall Co-ed Softball

I was going to meet up with Nick to have him read through some stuff I wrote for the Town Crier III. I am going to apply for a position to write for the Daily News. It is a weekly column called the Town Crier. There are thirteen people, so you end up writing four times a year. I went to Avery hall thinking the writing lab was there. But it was moved. So I got some lunch while I was up there.

I got home and Tyson was around the house from school today. I asked if he was going to go on calls. He said if they were higher level calls. I was going to head to the writing lab, but an Echo call came out. Tyson and I went on it. We ended up doing CPR. It turned out the person did not make it, so Pete had me do some coroner related stuff with it. I needed to find out if the doctor would be willing to sign off on the death. He was, so we did not take jurisdiction.

We got called from the hospital to another call. We got on scene and helped to package the patient then we were cleared.

I got home and ended up spending over an hour on a conference call. We were estimating time on the things we need to do for the next release. Finally just after five we broke the meeting and said we would continue it tomorrow.

I sat around waiting for the softball game. I was looking forward to playing. The game was at ten o'clock in Moscow. I was the starting second baseman. I missed one ball I should have gotten. My first at bat was ugly as well. But then after that I did a little better. I felt a little more at ease up to hit, but I still did not feel one hundred percent.

We were winning until the final inning. We had a six run lead. But a severely bad call at second base cost us an out that would have ended the game. That allowed them to extend their inning and make the necessary hits to come back and beat us. That really sucked.

First Case for the New Deputy Coroner

I was sitting at the computer when the tones went out for an unattended death in Pullman. I listened in. It wasn't more than about thirty minutes that I was getting a call from Pete about a case in Pullman he wanted me to do. I contacted both deputy coroners. Ken was able to make it.

He drove up to Pullman and we went to the scene and did our investigation. It took some extra time due to going slower for Ken's sake. When Bob from Kimballs got to the scene I saw it was the old Bob that worked there a few years ago. It was good to see him.

We went to the funeral home to finish up our investigation. Ken did well and was able to understand what we were doing. After talking to Pete we wrapped up our investigation. I went home and started on the paperwork.

Loren got a hold of me and we met up at Rico's for a little while. It was good to see him. I also saw Bruce from Cougster. He looked very good.

Welcome to the new Deputy Coroners

I got my bugs done for the day sort of early so I headed to Colfax early. I figured I would spend some time at the fire station in case of a call. Turns out we did not get a call, but I got to hang with and speak with Ralph for a little while. When it got closer to time for the coroners meeting I went to get some dinner from Arby's.

I got to the office and I was the first there. Close to the time for the meeting I went to the side door to let the two new deputy coroner's inside. We have Bill and Ken joining us. Ken is with Colfax fire and Bill was a captain at Pullman fire when I started on the department.

We went through the meeting in the normal way we do it a mix of joking, side tracks, war stories, and learning. I enjoy the meetings.

At the end of the meeting Pete and I were talking about the Easter Massacre. I was telling him about the research that I had done about it in the past. I told him about the shootings and how the official report said that the shooter committed suicide. Pete got interested in it and he is going to look up some information, whatever he can find. We might be going somewhere with this. Stay tuned for that.

Long Weekend Nearly Over

I was on call for the corner's office today, but it was really quite as it normally is. We don't get a lot of calls each month. Usually on average one or two that we investigate.

I had spoken to Chapman about the fact that it seemed like our rig checks on A-shift did not go very well. Many times I felt like people were skimming through things. We would get done when I wasn't there in record times. So I knew a good job was not being done. He said he gives people sheets. When they are done with the sheet they had to sign the sheet that they did it. That was later on if something was missed I could go to the person involved and talk to him about it. Doing that made the rig checks take longer than normal for our shift. It seemed like everyone did really well and we got stuff taken care of.

New Deputy Coroners

Today at the coroners meeting it was announced that Ken and Bill will be coming aboard the coroners office as new deputy coroners. Also that when Patti leaves Pete may pick up one more.

In the mean time he is going to have the new guys go out with Patti and I on cases to learn how we do things out there. I am a little nervous to have someone overlooking what I am doing, because I still feel very green when it comes to it. Granted compared to when I started I feel very good about my skills, but it seems that there is so much more that I need to know.

We had dinner at Eddys and talked about some recent cases. I went to Colfax Fire and spoke with Jenny as well as Dale from the jail for a while before I left Colfax.

Final City Softball Game of the Season

I asked and got permission to leave work early to get back to Pullman. We had our final softball games of the season tonight. We are in a situation of win and play, or lose and go home.

I hit the road and was trying to make time. I got to Pullman around five-twenty. I left Bellevue around one in the afternoon. So not too bad of a trip time. I got my uniform on and went to the playfields. We were playing against Kimmel. En route to the playfields I got a call from Pete about an industrial accident in Pullman. So I gave him some info about how to get to the scene and I told him I would call when I was done with softball.

We could not get a rally going. We scored in three innings and each inning we only scored one person. It was a dismal performance for us out there. I was disappointed. I was batting last and playing EH. So I didn't get to do too much. In fact I didn't really do a darn thing. My at bats were both outs.

After the game was done I got my coveralls on and went to the scene. It was at the end of Terre View Drive. I helped to process the scene, then I went to the funeral home where we examing the injuries and made our final determinations about what happened.

Following that I went to the Zuu to meet up with the team for Jersey Night. We started at My Office, but I was not able to be there because of the coroner's case. But I met up with them at the Zuu. I got a burger and some pop. We sat around for hours. We played some quarters while people were trying to drink.

Then it was off to Val Halla. We were there until nearly one-thirty in the morning.

Fatal Car Wreck

They are not happening like they use to, but we still get them from time to time. We got another one today. I was listening to my scanner when Colfax got dispatched out to it. While I was listening to the updates it because clear it was a fatal wreck.

I spoke with Pete who told me to take the case. I let Whitcom know and I got en route to the scene. On the way I heard Colfax fire saying they wanted water brought out. So I stopped at the fire station on my way through town to take the stuff out there. While going there I heard that three birds were brought in for the survivors.

I investigated the scene and did my report. I did not get home until pretty late after making my phone calls and writing my report.

I had to get home and get to bed, I was not going to be getting a lot of sleep. While I was in bed, I got two phone calls after midnight by people who know I normally stay up late, but due to having to be up early I was actually sleeping this time.

First Coroners Meeting this Summer

I had to get several things done today. I needed to cash some checks. Put money from one bank to another to pay for the laptop computer. I also planned on getting the license for my boat today.

But around one in the afternoon a call came out for a tree on fire. I wasn't going to go, but when they asked for Rescue I went to the station to find it was not even there. Bien came down and we went to the scene. We took the old Rescue. It was a pretty good sized grass fire.

It was pretty much out when we got there. But we helped with some of the overhaul. Then we helped get one of the engines back in service.

After that call I got cleaned up and did my bank runs followed by a trip to Colfax. After the licensing of my boat I went to the jail. I was there for a few minutes when a call for the fire department went out. I ran over and got in with Ken in the engine. We did not transport. I was back at the station hanging out until it was time for dinner.

I grabbed some food and went to the coroners office for our first meeting in a couple months. It was Patti's last regular meeting as she is moving to Spokane. It was not be the same without her around. I am now going to be the senior Deputy Coroner. Pete is planning on hiring two or maybe three people. We talked about the people on the list. We gave the pros and cons of the people on the list that we knew. Pete is going to work on the decision for the final hirings.

I then went back to Pullman. My ankle was killing me and I was thinking about not responding, but I decided that I was not going to be a whimp. I did wrap it and ice it. That really helped. After about a half hour of that the pain was nearly gone.

I went to bed around midnight. The tones went off for a motorcycle accident on SR one-ninety-four. I talked to a deputy on the scene and he said he just happened on the accident. He was doing something else and he just found the motorcycle laying there and it was one fire and someone was sitting there. That was our only call of the night.

Good Morning Pete

Rather than sleeping in a little bit, after being up to four-thirty in the morning, Pete had a different idea. He called me up to let me know of a case of a death in Colfax.

Turned out it was one of the people who live in Paul's Place. He was well known around town and always was helping to keep the streets and parking lots clean. A lot of people were sad when they found out about his death.

When I was done working that case a while after the noon hour I went home and tried to get caught up with stuff there. That is when Jim called me about playing softball against Steptoe Fire in the morning and getting some breakfast.

Because I now have to be in Colfax at eight in the morning and I didn't get a lot of sleep anyway, I decided that I would make it an early night. I did start my laundry. I had several loads to get through. I got those washing as I relaxed downstairs and while I made some dinner on the grill.

Three Hours Later

I went to bed and only three hours later my cell phone was ringing. It was six-thirty in the morning. I was being called to an unattended death near Hooper. That is in the western-most part of Whitman County. In fact while driving there typically you drive into Adams county then South back into Whitman County. I was on scene for just under an hour. Then I went back to the funeral home and did my work there. I went to the coroner's office following that to do my report and print everything off. By the time I was done it was after the noon hour. I went to Colfax fire and hung out for a few minutes.

David, Craig, and I were there. I was pointing out the last time it was just us and the guy on duty we got... then Craig said "don't say it." David and him both remembered that we got that fatal accident that I was IC of.

I went back to Pullman and down to the fire station for daily rig checks. We got those knocked off in a couple hours of time. It was very hot outside and inside the bay. We had a total of four people helping. For about a half hour of the shift neither Brian nor I could be on duty. That is why we did the rig checks early.

I went to my softball game and Brian was finishing his up. Brian left to be on duty and we took the dug out. We were playing our first regular season game after nearly three weeks off duty to a rain out and a week off for Memorial Day.

We started sort of slow, but then picked it up and hit the ball well. We went on to twelve run the other team and currently, with pre-season included we are undefeated.

I went home and got ready to be on call for the fire department. Then I went to Brandon and Peter's to play some poker with them. At one point I lost a lot of money on one hand where I had the same hand and someone else by I got out-kicked.

I went down to under a dollar and sat around that level for quiet a while. Some people thought I would just go all-in on nothing. But I waited for my hand then I would play it. I ended up winning each time I did end up going all-in. Finally it was nearing the end of the night. I walked out only down four dollars. Not too bad for having been sitting at thirty-five cents for a little bit.

Two Hours of Sleep and then...

So after getting to sleep my phone rings. Patti is waking me up. She told me there was an unattended death in Steptoe. That is the last thing I wanted to hear. I was so tired. I did not want to get out of bed.

Finally I did get up and headed out the door. I stopped to get some pop and made my way to the scene. When I got there I went inside where the power was out through out the town. I had to have people holding flashlights to see. By the time I was done with the scene it was light outside.

From there it was off to the funeral home. I spent some time there doing more investigation. I was stuck on the phone with Pete for about half an hour. Then I went to Colfax Fire to show them the photos from the funeral from yesterday.

I headed home. I was in Harlow's dip when Vinny turned on me. He was on a motorcycle. I heard him radio to Whitcom that he was stopping me. I was pulled over near the North Bypass. He came walking up. When he got close enough to see me in the mirror he started to smile from ear to ear. He walked to the window saying "I thought I had my first of the day!" He then sent me on my way.

I got home and pretty much went straight to bed. I was very tired. I slept for a couple hours until my phone rang. It was Chapman telling me about Rescue getting a door ripped off the officer side that folds up. So I went to the station to take a look. Our old Rescue was put into service until that is fixed.

I got ahold of Blank's, who did the deed to the door, on IM. We talked about it. Sounded like that was the cherry on top of a very bad day for him. We chatted for a few minutes.

I was invited by Phil to play poker at his place. He owns a condo at Wheatridge condos. He lives in Brian Turner's old place. It is a nice place with the wood laminate flooring, natural counter tops, and a lifesized stuffed Cougar. Several friends of Phil showed up and we played cards for about two hours. I would say for most of them they are novices at best. It was slow going as the conversation and other action too precedence over the game itself.

We finished up when they all wanted to go to the bar around midnight. I left up a couple bucks. Not as good as I show have done considering who was there.

The Funeral and After

My other post talks about the funeral itself, so I will not go into that here. But I started out the day at six in the morning with a phone call to WSU PD. I found out I would be able to get a ride. I got dressed in my uniform from the coroners office. I went to Tidyman's and waited for the precession.

Following the funeral I went home and worked on a problem with the events signup that Heston had found. I figured out the problem and fixed it. I went to the house that I have been looking at buying. I did some measurements of the area. I see it will fit in the room that is downstairs. I looked around the other rooms that are out there as well. I was told today that someone else is putting in an offer, possibly. I hate it when people do that. I am going to take the stance that if the real estate agent says that to me I will have the attitude that I lost all interest in the house. One of the things about the house today is that I could smell some signs of the dogs that lived there.

I also noticed that outside of the big rec room and the great room, there was not a lot of options for how to set up my furniture. Plus being only four bedrooms I would only be able to have at most two roommates as I would have to use one room as an office.

The house on Thomas street has made me realize some of the shortcomings of this house over all. I also don't like the appliances that are at this house. Thomas street has four bedrooms plus an office. Plus a rec room, game room, and living room. Plus two dining areas. It is a nicer house over all in my view. It is the house I would like to have. The one thing that it doesn't have is the larger driveway that Brandon street has.

Then it was time to head to the fire department for rig checks. I got to the station and talked to Pete on the phone about the funeral and the house search. I went into the station and I was talking to Morgan about some stuff while Peter and I were texting back and forth about playing some poker at my place tonight.

Morgan said he would play. I went to get some pop and got some dinner then I went home. I was going to call Phil about coming over. Just as I was calling him he sent me a text message about play at his place. When it was all said and done he ended up coming over to my place. I also got JT and his friend. Plus Brandon. So I had a seven handed table going. I was on call with Morgan. We got called out on two calls through out the night of playing cards.

When the night was over with I had won almost thirty bucks. It was a good night for me to play some cards. I went upstairs and did some stuff in my den before going to be at two in the morning.

Strange Coroner's Case

I spent several hours today working on the softball stats Excel workbook. There are a lot of little changes I was making. I added some new columns. I also added in some new calculations. It took a while to get it done, I am happy now that it is done. As I was working I would make a change, save everything, then I would find something small that was messed up, so I would have to fix that, but every little small detail had to be duplicated time and time again, so even small changes were actually large changes.

I also responded to fire calls. We had two nearly back to back. On the second one Wilcox joined Dearth and I on it. We went code through town. They took Wilcox with them to the hospital. Dearth was closest to the door of the ambulance, but he deferred to Wilcox saying he didn't have the correct shirt on. I told Dearth that if he was going to not do the work he has to do, because of wearing the wrong shirt, he should not respond on the call.

I got home and finished up my stats sheet. I was going to get some dinner when Pete called about a case in Colfax. I told him I would respond down to it. I got to the hospital parking lot. I talked to the RP and Colfax Officer. Then I took my photos and had the funeral home come for the removal.

I went to Paul's Place afterwords. I went through the deceased's room looking for information and things that could explain what happened. Following Paul's Place I went to the funeral home and checked the body. I did not find anything of note. We are going to have an autopsy due to the fact that the man is pretty young to just die.

Plus, the interesting part is that he was in a van coming back from Spokane. He was with several other people. He threw up. Then later on the driver asked another passenger if the deceased was okay. The passenger said, "yeah, he is just sleeping". It wasn't another half hour until the death was discovered.

When that was all done, I didn't get home until after midnight. I didn't have plans for the evening, but that didn't give me a choice.

Small Fire at NU

Today I was planning on cutting out early and heading to the jail to put in some time when I got a call about a major problem with one of our biggest customers. We had one week to fix it or they would have to shut down the site which would mean we would lose them. Because of that I stayed at work. I also got a call from Pete about someone found at the river.

I worked until I got the problem solved. I was unable to get away to even help Pete by going to the river. But I did make plans to meet him at the funeral home. I then had to find someone who could come over and run my poker game until I got back. I called Andy, and he said he would do it.

I went to Kimball Funeral Home and waited for Pete to arrive. There was an odor from the garage when the person was, but Craig had sprayed some pleasant smelling stuff all around.

I put some Vics under my nose. Actually, I put a lot there. Then we opened the body bag. The sight was bad. The person had been dead for about forty days in the water. This is my first "floater", as they say. It was pretty graphic. Pete and I checked everything over to see if we could find any markings or damage that would make us believe that there was some perimortem trauma involved. But we did not find any.

I left there and went to my house to find a full table of poker players. They had been there for about two hours. I got in on the action. It took a while but I finally started to win a little bit. I ended the night winning a little bit of money. *knock on wood* I have been doing pretty well at poker lately. I am playing a little more aggressive, but I am still playing smart. I am not making bad plays. I am making some good plays, and I am getting to know people and how they play.

A former co-worker died today

I was at home doing some work on my computer. I bought a new webhosting account. I wanted to get some more storage space and it was cheaper to get a whole new account than to buy extra space. So I did that. They were having special where I could get more space and free setup. I took advantage of those specials.

While that was going on I heard a call go out in Colfax for a CPR in progress call. From what it sounded like the person was already cool to the touch so I figured the ambulance would show up and then leave. But then I heard them ask for Steptoe to come and help. Then I heard them go en route to the hospital.

A while later I was getting ready to head to Colfax and I got a call from Pete. A guy I use to work with at the Sheriff's Office, Kirk Banks, was the deceased. I was sort of shocked. He was still pretty young.

I went to the Coroner's office to get some stuff turned in as well as download some photos that Pete asked me to download. I also picked up the new camera. I got the one with the big zoom and everything else. I was stoked. I started to read about how to use the features.

I went to Taco Time for some tacos then to the fire station. I ate my food and waited for the meeting to start. We were doing stuff with the new tower we are trying to get put in. We were mainly at the meeting for support. It was a hearing to determine whether we could get a conditional use permit to install the tower that is needed to get what we need done. There were some nearby homeowners who were not happy about it and they were there to try to stop it. But in the end we got the tower approved.

Then I went to the SO and did some time on the treadmill and watched House before coming back to Pullman.

When I got home I worked some on my asp.net applications as well as trying to get the stuff from Will to work. I am not having any luck on it.

Second Seven In the Morning in a Row

After waking up around one-thirty in the afternoon, I went to my computer to start to write the case report on the coroners case I worked last night. It took a little bit of time to work on the paperwork, answer some incoming phone calls, and keep up with various online conversations, but I finally completed it and E-mailed it to Pete.

When that was finally done I was just doing some stuff around the house until it was time to go to the fire station for the daily rig checks. One of the new guys was there so I made sure he knew how to do the rig checks and let him do most of the work so he knew what to look for.

Brian and I had been talking about CISD's and the need for them and when one is needed. We also discussed going to Wesson's retirement party. We made our way up there a little after seven o'clock pm, because dinner should have been done by then. We listened to the funny stories where Wesson was involved.

Finally I got a camera to take some pictures for Dragoo. I went around and snapped about one hundred pics in the next twenty minutes or so. We went back to the station and I had mentioned that it had been quiet. I figured that a call would come out and make people have to leave the retirement party.

When we got the rig back to the station I did my timecard and went home. I was trying to find some information online when we got dispatched to a lady who was assaulted. When we got onscene the ambulance cancelled us. We went back to the station. I went back home and worked some more to find the hoses and connectors I was looking for to use around the house.

That is when another call came in for a car accident. It was one Two-Seventy near mile post eight. A car had read-ended some of the construction rigs. When we pulled up on scene the car was about thirty feet off the road way. I was curious how this happened. Then after looking at the front of the car we could see there were two impact points. The driver had hit the plow blade of this big tractor. The car hit it and it made a deep narrow dent in the car. Then there was a second dent nearly identical to it about eighteen inches away.

From standing at the front of the car you could see where the gravel and dirt mixture had a slight disruption of the color, where the tires had driven across the gravel. You could actually see two sets of tire tracks about eighteen inches apart. It became clear that the car hit the tractor plow blade, then backed up and hit it again.

We went to the hospital to get Zettler who went with the ambulance. As we were leaving the hospital we got called out to a fire alarm at Terrel library, which is the new library next to Holland. They finally named it after about ten years of being called the new library.

When we got on scene we were first there, aside from the WSU cops. We could not see nor smell anything. I thought to myself, that even though on calls like this most of the people go in without SCBA and whatnot, that we should for good measure, but instead we went in like everyone else always does when appears to be a false call.

We talked to the cops and then Engine-thirty-two got onscene, we invited Clint to come in and play. He had the alarm key that allowed us to work the system. We found where the alarm was coming from. It was stairwell "C" on the first floor. We made our way there. When we went into the main room of the library on the first floor across the room I could see some hazy smoke in the air. We got closer and found that indeed it was smoke. Brian checked the door for heat.

Feeling none he opened it up staying low. There was a lot of smoke in the stairwell. We did not want to go into the environment without SCBA. And of course we left it in the rig. So we had to go out and get on air. When we made entry into the stairwell we made notification that we went on air. We went up and down the stairs and could not find the source of the smoke. The stairwell had a door that also lead to the CUB. That door was cracked open because of an extension cord that caused the door to not shut fully. After we made entry I noticed the smoke was not as bad. We allowed the building to naturally vent.

After a few minutes the stairwell was clear enough to reset the alarm. The main library area still had a good haze, but that would go away over some time of the HVAC system running. We had to fill our air bottles. Then went back to the Deuce as the sun was starting to rise. I went home and waited until seven o'clock to go to bed, just like yesterday.

In The Playoffs!

I had a couple guests on the show today to talk about the Outside the Wire movie that was shown by the College Republicans on campus. The "open minded" Democrats and Progressives took up seats in the front row and staged a walk out before the movie was shown. How nice that they actual see what they hate.

We had our softball playoff game. We were playing a team we beat in the regular season. We went out there pretty much easily beat them again. That means that we will be going to round two of the playoffs against Kelly's team. Ryan said he is going to come down for that game because he wanted to play against Kelly.

I was at home and working on the stats for the team. I also was cruising around the net as well as watching some TV. I finally found my way to bed at three-thirty in the morning. Before I was even deeply sleeping I got a phone call. It was about four in the morning it was Pete. There was a death in Pullman he wanted me to look into.

It appeared to be a natural involving an elderly person. But there were some questions about why there was a delay in contacting us from the time of death. Pete said to let Pullman PD know what was going on. I called Whitcom to let them know what I was doing.

I got on scene and I got a call from Pullman PD. They were going to have to investigate because the person was not in hospice. So I waited for the first officer to show up. It was Heidi. When she got on scene she started to run my truck plate. I heard her over the radio. I looked back and then she said disregard. I also hear the Sgt request Pullman Ambulance show up.

We went to the house and introduced ourselves. We did our investigation. The ambulance showed up. I made sure they did not do anything to the body, like running a strip, like they like to do. They pretty much showed up and left.

I spent the next couple hours getting information and waiting for the detectives to show up. They got on scene around six in the morning. We went to the room to investigate the body and get photographs. I was out of there around seven in the morning. I went home and got a bowl of cereal before going to bed.

Pete was thinking it would be a quick hour or so, but it turned into nearly three hours.

Late for Training

After talking with Brown on Monday my understanding is that training for ventilation would be on Wednesday. But at around one o'clock I got a call asking if I was coming down. I told Howell I would be right down. I was not as ready as I would have liked to have been, but I was able to do an okay job with everything.

After that was done I went home and continued to work on getting the presentation put together with the readings from the book as well as other sources. I also found a couple videos that I was thinking about showing.

Then it was time to go to the CISD in reference to the fatal car accident from Sunday night. That is my third one in less than one year. Honestly I have not had to go to them for myself, but I feel like by being there I am showing support to the others.

When it was over I spoke with Pete for a little bit before heading home. One thing I don't like about it is when people talk about physical reactions, such as feeling ill, not eating, not sleeping, nightmares, etc, I don't have those things. But I don't want to say "it has not affected me at all. In fact, as soon as the call was over, I was done with it." That just seems cold. I asked him about it. He said something that is important for us as a Coroner is to be able to compartmentalize our calls so we do not get eaten alive by them. People who cannot do that do not last long in this line of work.

When I got home it was late I has some cereal and watched some TV, but I was pretty tired and I got to bed around one in the morning.

Cutting it Close with Poker

My poker game started at one in the afternoon. I was scrambling to get players. I was nearly ready to cancel when I found I was going to have a fifth player. So I kept it on.

We started to play at one. I was doing alright for myself. I was holding my own not having to rebuy. A couple others had rebought before the final rebuy round. A few people also did add-ons at that point. I went from the chip leader, to someone in the middle of the pack. I did not do a rebuy nor an add-on.

As the day went on we were getting closer and closer to softball time. I gave Ryan some money to go get some pizza because we wanted to eat before the game. He had been busted out by this time and was bored watching golf on TV anyway.

He went off and was gone for a while, I was starting to wonder where he went. Then he came back with some pizza from Pizza Pipeline. At it turned out Little Caesars was closed today. So he had to order and wait for the pizza from Pipeline.

I was eating and trying to play cards at the same time. It was working out okay. But the others started to bleed me a little bit. I wasn't getting anything to work with and soon my stack started to go fast. The clock was getting close to time to go to softball. As it turned out Dave, Ty, and I were the only ones left. But we all had to be at the field by six for the softball games. Ty played for a different team but he also had the same game times as Dave and I. I started to push on some bad hands because I still needed to get my uniform on.

I finally got busted out. Dave and Ty decided to split the pot between them with some extra going to the person in the chip lead.

We actually got to play two softball games today. Normally we only get one at the most. The first game we kept up with the other team just fine and started to get a lead on them. They would have some innings where they would score some runs, but they were not a great team. We went into the final inning. I got a clutch basehit and I was standing on first. Nick came to the plate and hit a walk-off three-run homerun for the win.

The second game was against a team that had a very bad pitcher. But the guys would not be patient and allow for some walks. No one was getting any hits. In fact when the game was done, as a team, we had four hits. There is no way to win a softball game on four hits. I was pretty mad about the whole thing. Some of the guys were saying softball is a hitters game.

I don't disagree, you have to be liberal with what you choose to swing at, but when guys are swinging at pitches over their head and popping up all the time, we have to do something. We lost that game because really no one cared to win it.

When that game was done I was heading home so I could get my uniform off and head to the station for rig checks. As I was coming down Terre View from the fields I could see people were leaving the station. I figured that rig checks were done. I called Bien and talked to him. He told me what had transpired on the telephone with Jacob so I could get the full story.

Because rig checks were done I went into the house and got my uniform off. I was sitting at my computer when I head Pullman and D-Twelve get dispatched for a car accident. It went out as Bravo-Injury. But I listened in and I could tell it was worse as time went on. There was one person trapped and barely breathing. As I listened in more, Tyson and Reed were both on IM chatting with me. I heard a call for two more ambulances.

It was fourteen minutes into everything when I got a call from Pete. I knew then what was going on. I was given the message to call Whitcom. I then went in service and went to the scene. As it turned out an elderly lady had been involved and killed by the car accident. When I got on scene I also found out the people in the accident were related to some firefighters. That caused many people at the scene to be more stressed than normal.

I got on scene before the first person was even transported to the hospital. I started to look at the scene and make my impressions of what happened. I photographed the scene and then spoke with Vinny about removal. I was given the greenlight by him. He needed to do his investigation and I did not want to mess up anything he was doing.

I got Kimballs to come out and got the removal done. I spoke with IC and a few of the cops there. Pete had also called me a couple times while I was out there wanting to know what was going on. He decided to come out. He met me at the funeral home. After I had a chance to make my determination of the cause of death, Pete went over it on his own and did the same thing. When it was done he concurred with what I had found and what I said was the cause of death.

By the time that scene was done and the funeral home part was done it was pretty late. I still had to get back and write my report about the rest of the incident and what I had found.

No sleep for the tired

This evening I went to My Office to start the night off. It was to get people signed up for the softball team. I was there to help Dave find Brian when he got there. Then I had to head to Colfax for our Coroners meeting. We had been trying to schedule one for several weeks and finally got this one going. We talked about my case earlier last month. We also got the on-call schedule set for the next two months.

After the meeting I got back to Pullman to be on call for the fire department. It was one of those nights where we ran calls most of the night getting very little sleep. I have the recruit class in the morning so I had to make sure I was up in time for that and I knew I would be dragging due to my lack of sleep.

Just Some Drive Time

I got a phone call from Pete to start my day. Instead of going to back to sleep I got up and went to the training tower. No one was there. So I went to the fire station and talked to Chapman. He was doing a rig check on the ambulance. I got some drive time set up with my guys.

I got some lunch and then went back to the station. I helped finish the rig check while waiting for Morgan and Jake to get there. I got a phone call from the family of the deceased I worked with yesterday. I told him what we were doing and what the latest information that I had.

We went out for a couple hours. Morgan is new at driving and he is still getting use to driving. Jake did really well. He doesn't really know the city very well so he needs to learn the city. But he drove the rig well.

When we were done I went to the store to get some shopping done. I have been needing to do it for a few days. While shopping Volk called and told me the ambulance was dirty and I should have washed it. I told him I could wash it if he would like. He said he would. I was sort of pissed because they have left our rigs dirty.

When I got home I made some dinner and watched TV for a couple hours. I made my way to the station around eleven at night. I washed the ambulance. Just as I was finishing up the tones went off. But only the PL had to go. I don't know if the ambulance had to go out on a call or not.

Incredibly Busy Day

Today started out with a Delta and Echo response at the same time. I went down and I went on Rescue. It was about seven-thirty in the morning. We were going to go to the Echo, but we were told to go to the Delta. The Echo was cleared quickly, so I knew what that meant.

After the Delta we got an Alpha. We were first on scene and it really was just a public assist. When I was leaving I had a call from Pete about the death in Pullman. He was going to take it, but I told him I was the one on call. So I went home and got into my coroners uniform and went to the scene. I was on scene for a couple hours getting information and then I went to the funeral home and got more information. Due to the information I got from the family it was not clear whether it was an accidental or a natural event. I spent some time talking to Pete. We were going to meet up later on and go over everything.

I got back to my place and worked on the paperwork. It took some time to write the stuff up, count the meds, and contact the doctors. I got done with that and went back to the funeral home to meet Pete. We went over my findings and talked about what I found. He said that he agreed an autopsy was going to be needed. He scheduled that.

I had just enough time to get home, change, and get to the fire station. Erik called and said we needed to take Rescue to work the WSU Baseball game. It was against the Huskies. There were more than three-thousand people. It was one of the ten biggest crowds ever. We were there working that for a couple hours when we got a call for a power line down. Tyson and I went on that leaving Brian at the game, in the tenth inning. It turned out the Cougs lost in the eleventh.

On the power line down call I took command. I cleared the other units. We stood by incase a fire broke out because the live wire. A couple WSU cops were there and we spent the next couple hours talking and making jokes. We were on scene for four hours waiting for Avista and to be cleared. I got my report written.

I got my report done. I got home and made a sandwich. Then we got a call. The next couple hours we got a couple more calls. It was so tiring. I finally got to go to bed about four in the morning. It was nearly a twenty hour day on the clock. I was so tired by the end of the day.

Softball Signups!

Getting up this early, I had to get to the rec center to sign up for the softball team. I was the first one in the Men's Comp on Sunday nights. It is not like it use to be when there was a line down the hall of the CUB with people waiting to get a team. Now you can show up hours after the sign ups start and still get your team.

My schedule showed a Coroner's meeting as well as a meeting to get signed up for teaching recruit classes. That meeting started at one o'clock pm. I got to the station just in time for the meeting to start. It lasted about an hour talking about the schedule of the academy as well as getting people signed up for it.

I was at home working on some stuff there before heading to Colfax for the Coroner's training. I stopped by the fire department in Colfax to let them know I would not be there for training because I was going to the coroners meeting. I also had Ken's pocket knife and returned it to him. He gave me a lot of crap, in jest, but it was fun.

I went to the coroners meeting and no one show up. After a while I called Pete and there was no meeting tonight. So I went to the Colfax Fire training. I was a little late but I was able to be there for most of the training. We were doing stuff with setting up Command.

Poker at Zeppoz

I went to Staples to get the stuff the was missing from when I was there yesterday. I got home and worked on cutting those items from the foam board. I also got the photos glued to the foam board.

I decided to go to Zeppoz for a while. That was a mistake however. I could not find a hand to win. I got a couple, but even on hands that I had that were good people were sucking out on me. It is hard to chase someone away when you can only bet a certain limit. I was there for several hours, but I ended up losing pretty bad. Finally I gave up. I still had some money, but I was not about to drop any more money at the table.

Coroner's Supplies

I made my way to Moscow to look at cameras. I was seeing the prices they had on them over there. I found WalMart and Office Depot were the same price. I also stopped by Staples. I ended up buying several things that I have wanted to get including a papercutter, an exacto knife, a scale ruler, as well as supplies to start working on the foam board for my project.

I got home and realized that some of the items were left at Staples and they were closed. So I spent the time making measurements and getting everything ready to start making the cuts. It took a couple hours to get things measured and the lines drawn. I am excited about how this project will turn out.

Got My Letter Finally

I got the letter that shows my OC training was completed. I am going to send that off to Mercer Island so I don't have to get sprayed with OC again.

I delivered the laptop computer to Poffenroth today as well. At Colfax Fire we had our Board and Business training.

I did some more research on the camera for the coroners office. I am hoping that we can get them. It is a Kodak camera with a twelve-x zoom.

Cooling Off

I woke up early in hopes of getting my meeting with Heston. It turned out he said today was no good. I was stewing on everything and it made it hard to concentrate at times. I really wanted to talk to Michael about who told him what in relation to me being "mad" at him. I finally got a hold of Michael on my way to Colfax for the coroners meeting. We talked for about thirty minutes. I got a chance to better understand the issue with Heston as Michael.

It seems that people who were subbing on his shift recently were saying things that lead him to believe I was mad about things. That, of course, is not true. I also found out it was not a situation where a reserve said something around a group of full-timers who talked to Heston. It was more of a situation where different people were getting certain perceptions of me.

I also had realized my demeanor has been pretty poor lately. Around the guys and on calls it has been good, but there have been times were I was less that happy about stuff happening. I think I need to reevaluate what I have given up to be here and why I chose to do so. The overall picture is that I want to be here. I desire to be here. I would hate to not be on the department. But up some of the day to day politics are very troubling. I wish I could distance myself from the politics and just enjoy responding on calls and being part of the team.

When we were off the phone I felt better. I went into the SO to get my letter that said I have been through OC training, but it was not there. Darn it!

I went to the Coroner's office. Patti forgot about the meeting and did not show up. So it was just Pete and I. We went over some of the stuff he did at the conference in general, but we did not spend much time on it. We spent most of the time BSing.

Following the meeting I got home and started to work on one of my bugs. When I got stuck and when Russell called I went to his house. We played Apples to Apples. I hung out there for a couple hours and had a great time. By the time I had left I had forgotten about the stuff going on at the fire department. I was finally feeling relaxed. I love having friends.

Monthly Coroners Meeting

When I got to Colfax I wanted to get a couple things taken care of, so I started at the SO and I talked to Jodie about my OC spray training records. I also saw Tom. I was debating about asking him how he knew about me, but I opted not to.

I went to Colfax fire and hung out there for quite a while. I looked at Tim's CAD drawings of the well incident. They are doing a critique on it today. But because of the Coroners meeting I couldn't stick around.

I went back to the SO and down to the coroners meeting. It was pretty much same ol' stuff. We got our schedule done for next month, followed by covering some of the cases we had over the last six weeks or so. We have not been too busy on the weekends lately.

Incredibly Tired

After getting to bed and sleeping for about four hours I was up again. I was very tired and I got the last few things done with the HazMat CD's. Shortly thereafter I had to get to the radio show. I went to the studio and I forgot my cell phone at home.

I was dragging as I started the show and I did not have my "A" game going. So I was just being loopy but I got through the show. I did not think it was all that good. I had a little bit of time at home before I had to get to the fire station to work on the Rescue and where to put the new tools. When I got home there was a message from Pete about a suicide down at the river. He ended up going on it.

I met up with Erik at the fire station and we put the new tools and Rescue and rearranged the tools that existed on it. It is cool that we are running the new tools now. With OTEP training coming up at seven o'clock I just decided to hang out at the station.

Pete called me and told me that if I had some time to go to the funeral home and investigate the wounds to get an idea of what happened on this case. It was interesting because now I have seen shotgun, handgun, and rifle damage to the human head. There is a lot of differences between each one.

The OTEP training was pretty short over all. We covered burns. Once we were done with the training I went to Mike's house for poker. I was there until midnight. I ended up walking away with an extra thirty-one bucks.

When I got home I wrote back and forth with Matt and Monte about the call from yesterday. I told Matt that I was not offended and that he could not offend me. I asked both to keep the information secret. I also asked Monte how Tom knew about it. It was Tom who told Monte. Monte said he heard about it several years about and it was a non-issue to him. I was surprised to hear that Tom has known about it for three or four years. Monte said "remember it is a small world". I wonder if the Evergreen article is how Tom found out.