Great, Wonderful Mood

After getting up this morning I was in great and wonderful mood. I don't know what it was, but I wasn't tired. And I also felt so great. So happy. Just in a good mood. I ran some errands around town including meeting with a PPD officer about a stop I was involved with recently. He asked me to do a report on it. I went to the fire station and spoke with Heston for a little bit while I was there.

I was working for Peter tonight on Rescue. I went to the fire station to get on Spillman to get some of the work completed that I needed to do. While I was getting things done I was asked if I would go help out at the basketball game because only one person was available. I said I would. I had to run home and get ready. I went straight to Beasley. The Coug women lost to the Huskies. It was a good game. They went to overtime.

After that was done I went home and got a couple things done on the computer before I went to the station. When I was there I got the things completed on Spillman and went to the dayroom where Pritch and Mully were watching TV. I sat down to watch with them. While there we were dispatched to a call. When it was done I went home.

I was there for a while when we got another call. While on the way to the hospital we were toned to a person down. We knew the call was coming in because of listening to the police. We were first on scene because we were about a block away when the tones actually hit. I took patient care to start the call. It turned out to be a release.

We got another call at the PD before we were done. Then we went to the hospital and picked up Mully. When we got back to the station that was going to be it for the night for us. It was after three in the morning. I stayed up until five watching some videos on YouTube.

Final Day of the Decade

I went to the fire station and met with Brenda about the reserve timesheets. I also met up with Ryan about the map tests and the upcoming fire academy. I am going to be making the timesheets for the reserves this year. I also was integrating the timelog into the timesheet Excel workbook. But more importantly something I have been working on is the ability to fill out the timelog and have it automatically fill in the timesheet. That is now completed. I also let Ryan know about some of the things I didn't like about the academy in the past. I also let him know the map tests are worthless for proving guys know the roads. So often they pass the test with one-hundred percent, but still are clueless when they get on the street.

I went home and started to work on the new spreadsheet. I had the basic stuff done for the timecard. I just did some tweaking on it to make it closer to the ones we currently use. The timelog has some updates to it. Then I started to put the two together.

I was trying to create a master workbook that would have every one's name and employee number. It would also include the pay. Then if information needed to be updated on any reserve it would only have to be updated in one spot and the workbooks would get that information by linking to the master. But I was running into problems. That is because I didn't want to hard code each firefighters workbook, I wanted to be able to have one spot where I put the firefighter number in their workbook and Excel would then take that number and concatenate it with the column number in order to get the correct data. But that is not nearly as easy as it sounds. I found a function called INDIRECT, but it only works when the master spreadsheet is also open. That is not going to work for what I want to do.

Finally I had to give up on that idea for this year. I just made a master in the workbook and the data would be updated there. So it is still only one place to update the pay information for people. But if four people need their pay information updated it will require opening up four spreadsheets rather than one. But I got the whole set done. I hope the guys like it. I know several thought it was cool with mine, because I was testing out the process. Now that I know it works I asked Heston about doing it for everyone. He said go ahead. Several of the guys who saw me using it this last year wanted me to do that for them. So I am sure for the most part guys will like it. But as with all change there are some guys who hate change and will complain about it no matter what.

I went to the Deuce and met up with Suggy for working the WSU Men's Basketball game. They were playing Oregon in the Pac-Ten opener. The first half was not very solid for the Cougs. But in the second half they started to come alive. They had an eight-zero and a ten-zero run. Soon it was tied up. With about thirty seconds to go the Cougs had the ball. But they ended up wasting too much time on the clock. That caused them to have to take a poor shot and it was missed. That put the game into OT. In the first OT the Cougs had a five point lead, but it came down to a dunk by Casto in the final second of the game. The Cougs were up by two and the crowd went crazy. There was three-tenths of a second left on the clock. But the Cougs were assessed a technical foul for celebration. They gave the Ducks to free-throws. The guy made both and they tied it up and went to a second OT. The second one was closer. But the game ended when the Cougs had the ball with less than ten seconds to go. It was tied. The Cougs missed the shot. The Ducks got it and drove hard to the bucket. They made it and got fouled. They celebrated without penalty. They made the freethrow going up by three with, again, three-tenths of a second. But the Cougs couldn't come back and lost. I was so mad. It was crushed. It felt the highest of highs only to be crushed.

During the game I talked to Kuhrt and he was seeing what I was doing for New Years. I told him that I had no plans. He said I should come over. He said he would get in touch with me after the game. I went home and completed my project to work on the timesheets. I got a text from Kuhrt to come over. I headed that way. When I got to his place we watched some TV and talked shop. I asked him questions about the way he learns and remembers traffic laws. We had a couple drinks. At midnight we toasted the new year. It was a nice evening with the Kuhrt's and their pets.

Apple Cup at the Moose

I was invited to go to the Moose and watch the Apple Cup with the gang. I got there just before kick off. I was invited to help myself to some food they had there. I ate and had some pop. I am on call tonight so I cannot have anything more than pop.

As the game was going on I thought the Cougs had a chance. They were down by thirteen after half, but I was mad they didn't try to score when they had the ball and some time on the clock to at least try something.

The second half things went down hill. We ended up losing by a shutout. I cannot believe how horrible things are right now. But I believe we will see things look up in the next two years.

I had to leave before the game was done to get my uniform and do the daily rig checks at the station.

I went home. Brandon, Kevin, and I played some games. We played for a couple hours before Brandon had to go to bed. I went to bed myself around midnight. I need to get up and patrol tomorrow.

Before I got to sleep, I tossed and turned in bed for a while. Finally I was drifting off to sleep when a call came in for a Delta Response for a Structure Fire at the Elmhurst apartments. Pretty much every firefighter in Pullman knows that is a bad news place. It is very old building and it would be a big fire should one happen.

This time it was only an overcooked pizza.

Final Cougar Football Saturday of the Year

I had breakfast with the boys and Jon before heading to the fire station. I went to The Deuce and picked up the minivan and some EMS equipment. I went to station one. I hung out there having some lunch and talking with some of the guys as we waited for the briefing. After which we headed to the stadium. I was working as the runner.

I spent the whole day in the South Aid Room, aside from the times when I walked to the top of the seats to see some game action in person. The Cougs looked good for the first half, considering all other factors. We were only eleven points out. But the second half belonged totally to Oregon State. The number of people at the game is horrible. I heard there were about eight thousand total. I am not sure if it was that few for sure, but it surely was empty.

We got some free pizza from Pizza Hut. They gave away all their remaining pizzas to people around the concourse level.

After the game I went home. We ordered some Pizza Pipeline. We also got Tricky Sticks. The boys love it. We ate the pizza and watched some TV. Before it got too late I went to my den and worked more on my suicide report. It is a very long report. It took a while to write it up and I still have some more I need to do.

When I was done I was looking at the Seattle Times website. There was an article about suicide awareness. I read it. There was one person talked about in the article. I soon realized it was a case that happened here in Whitman County.

I stayed up reading some suicide resources before heading off to bed around one in the morning.

New Guy on the Shift

I worked the women's basketball game and when it was done I went to the fire station to meet up with the new guy who is on my shift. He is an EMT and in the current recruit class. Because he is an EMT he has been put on shift and is starting to go on calls as an observer for the most part.

We covered what calls he responds to and what he doesn't respond to. Things we do when we respond, etc. Then it went into rig checks. I had been thinking about going to Seattle for marine firefighting training, but due to the response committee meeting tomorrow I decided to skip it, because the response committee is important to me.

Another Cougar Loss

This morning with only four hours of sleep I was up and getting ready for Cougar Football. I got my uniform on and drove to The Deuce to give the van keys to Michael. I had forgotten to put them in the keybox when I left the station last night.

I was going to the station when I got a call from the developer lead of the contract I was interviewing for. It went about thirty minutes total. Kittelson and I went to station one together in my rig. We went down for lunch and the game briefing. I had a couple hamburgers and enjoyed the company of everyone until the briefing started.

I am working North One with Kittelson. Bien is going to be coming to the game to meet up with us and hang out. We stopped at Safeway to get some pop and supplies for the game. I found that Safeway switched from Pepsi to Coke. I was very annoyed by this. I am going to write some letters about this.

We got to the stadium and made our way to our place over the tunnel. It wasn't too bad on the weather side of things to start. I was wondering how my ankle would deal with the standing around. I was a hurting unit by the end of the game. Without a doubt. I hope things will get better. Kittelson and I talked about being a reserve sheriff. Keith showed up and we watched the game together. Bien made is way around a little bit going to see Reed and a couple others. For the most part he stayed with us the whole time.

The Cougs were not doing too well. They threw three INT's in the first quarter along. UCLA scored on their first possession because of the first INT the Cougs gave up. UCLA had a short field for a lot of the first quarter. The Cougs were only able to score one touchdown the whole game. The Cougs were having such a hard time they fans cheered for firstdowns. By half time many of the fans had left this extremely cold game. Near the end of the game one could almost count the number of people left. The Cougs went on to lose.

When it was done we went back to the station and turned in our equipment. I went home and took some medicine for my ankle and had some dinner. I was meeting up with Victor for working Jeff Duhman at Beasley. I was looking forward to working that event. We made our way to Beasley. The doors were open and people were pouring in. It looked like a lot of people were going to be coming. I hung out in the first aid room for the opening act. Once it came time for Dunham to come on I went to the place where we stage on the concourse level. He came up on stage to a lot of cheers. There were a couple bits it was doing that was cracking me up. I was laughing really hard. He did a couple things on the local area and poked a little bit of fun at the football game.

It was a good show and people were having a good time. Once it was done I went home. It was nearly eleven-thirty at night. I got a hold of Keith who was over at Reed's. He had me come over and bring some batteries. I went to Dissmores to get the batteries. They only had two lines open so it took a while to get through the line.

I got to Reed's and we played some Rock Band. It was my first time playing. I had a good time playing that. I had a couple beers while I was there. Keith was crunk in a big way. He was starting to go down hill while I was there. I think he is going to be hating life. Before I left it wasn't liking life too much as it was. I went home around two-thirty in the morning. I didn't stay up too late before going to bed. I was really tired because I didn't get a lot of sleep last night.

Interview in Spokane

The plan for the day was to drive to Spokane and interview for a contract position for a company based in Spokane. I would work from home with the position. The trip up to Spokane went just fine. The roads were good. I saw some snow flakes hitting when I was getting close to Spokane.

The interview lasted about thirty-five minutes. I went to get some pizza from Rocky Rococo's downtown and then hit the road. But the snow was falling pretty good. The drive home went a little slower as people were driving a bit slower. The more South I got the more the snow was falling and sticking on the road. After I left Colfax it was really slow going. The traffic was backed up from Pullman to near Shawnee road. That really slowed me down. I took the Albion road to cut off the traffic.

I got home and got my uniform on and went to fire station. I got the minivan ready to go and waited for Walker. We went to Beasley and worked the men's basketball game. The Cougs were playing in their first regular season game and they won it pretty easily, but they didn't look great. It was a win all the same.

Just before six o'clock the tones went off for a rollover accident with extrication required. Rescue rolled on it. One of the people from the accident needed to get to Spokane. But Spokane had no beds, so we ended up needing to go to Kootenai Medical Center.

I got a call from Foster to see if I could drive. I said I was at the basketball game, but if it could wait until the game was done I would drive. I was told it needed to go out now. I was told he could call a couple others. When no one was able to do it, he called me back to see if Heston was good with me going out now and leaving only one at the game. It was nearly over, so that was okay with Heston.

I went to the station and we grabbed the ambulance and hit the road. It took about thirty minutes to get the transfer moved to our cot and to get going. It was a code run. It was one-hundred-and-three miles. The roads were in bad shape until I got close to Spokane. It was slow going at time. I was really concentrating on making sure we got there safely. Then on I-Ninety the road was fine. We were able to cruise along there very well. This was my longest overall code run and the longest on a multiple lane highway.

We didn't get back to Pullman and back in service until almost four-thirty in the morning. I didn't get to bed until five in the morning. I was not going to get a lot of sleep tonight.

Come From Behind Victory

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

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

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

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

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

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

Potlatch Softball Tournament

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

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

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

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

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

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

I Was Too Whimpy

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

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

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

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

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

The Cougs Couged-It

This morning I got working on my laundry and I was going to wash my car, but due to doing a repair on my hose I couldn't do it. I swept the garage out and made the measurements to build a shelf for the back of the rig to make better use of storage for my rig.

I went to Rich's house to help him with his computer. There was a problem with the DVD drives not being recognized. I spent some time doing some troubleshooting to find the problem. With some searching online I did find a possible solution. We had some lunch and then I did the solution I found. It worked and I was on my way to the station.

I was working the basketball game. I was excited to both work it and get to see the game. The Cougs unfortunately had a nice lead, but lost it towards the end of the game to lose it. That really sucked. We should have won the game.

Following it the game we went back to the station. I fueled up the rig and went home. It wasn't long before we were called out for a call-back due to multiple calls going on at once. I went to the station and I was there for almost two hours until enough workers were back in service to bring the numbers up to the minimum staffing levels.

Mr. President

This morning the first thing we did in class was vote for the class president. I wanted to be the class president. There were two possible candidates that most likely would have been voted for. Myself and one other guy who works in the jail right now. He also would have been a very fine pic. But it is something I want to do. The vote was held by Ross putting out the ballots. When the counting was done it was nearly unanimous. I am now the Ought-Eight Reserve class President. You can just call me Mr. President.

When I got home I contacted Dan. He was taking me to the WSU Cougar Basketball game. The cougs were playing against Stanford. I spent some time talking with KStew about softball. I also spent some time talking with the guys from the FD. Then I made my way to my seat.

The Cougs kept the game close the whole way. Then as the game was going down the stretch we were in a battle back and forth for the lead. Finally Thompson made a dunk over one of the Stanford players. That caused the whole team and crowd to go nuts. That seemed to be the big turning point. It was at that point the Cougs seemed to really know that it was our game. The Cougs went on to win. It was the first Pac-Ten win.

Ten OT Hours

The plans of the day were simple. Go to the Cougar Basketball game. But I did more than just that. I got home from the fire department. I kept my uniform because I was going to have to go to the Deuce to head to the basketball game and I didn't want to drive all the way down town just for the uniform later on.

When I got home I did some plowing of the driveway and sidewalk. It was pretty cold outside while I was doing that. A neighbor asked if I could do a portion of her driveway where the road plow had deposited some heavy snow chunks.

I went to the Dodge dealer to get my new antenna for my rig. The old one was slightly damaged. I also found out how I could fix it from being unpluged. The coax cable that goes from the radio to the antenna was unplugged and I had to plug it in, but the area where it was unplugged was too tight to get most tools, let alone my hands in. I also found out the traction control that my ought-seven Durango had was also in the ought-five and ought-six, but not the ought-four. So I am thinking about upgrading to an ought-five. But I just don't know if I want to take on the new debt load. I may wait it out a little bit until the prices get a little better.

I went home and got the antenna on my rig fixed and now I have a radio that gets more than ZFun. I started to get ready for the basketball game. I wanted to get to the station early and get the van started, warmed up, and the snow taken care of.

I met up with Turpin, Robinson, Walker, and Pauly down at the Deuce and we headed to Beasley. The first half of the game between the Cougs and Huskies was good. We lead most of the way, but went into half down two points. That is as close as it would get. Coming out of the first half we couldn't score and they couldn't miss. The Cougs really let it get out of hand and we ended up losing by around twenty points.

After the game we were heading back and the tones went out for a backfill of the station. I called in on that. I went to station one and worked there for five hours while the guys did a transfer to Spokane.

John was doing an OT shift so he made dinner for everyone and invited me to have some. It was homemade lasagna, his wife made it. It was good. We also had garlic bread. After dinner I helped to clean up and I did the hand dishes, but there wasn't much to do.

John, Chia, and I played some poker for about four hours. We had a lot of fun making fun of each other and pushing money around. At the end of the night John was even, I was up six bucks and Chia was down six.

Worked An Event

I did some studying of the stuff for the reserve academy with Jessie. She came over and we went over a lot of the slides as well as the objectives of learning to see how well we knew everything.

We did our studying until around four. Then I had to head off to the fire department to get ready to work a basketball game for Beasley. The women's team was playing an exhibition game against a team from Australia. The other team had high school students on it. Our women's did well and beat them.

During the game I spent a lot of time reading and studying for my reserve academy.

The End of an Era

I started out this morning with doing the cooking for breakfast for the football game. I really was hoping that I would be the one working the game on the field. The Cougs are playing USC. As it turned out I was working the field. I was so excited about that fact.

After breakfast we had the briefing and then made our way to the field. It was neat to be down on the field. As the game went on it was clear the Cougs were in big trouble. It has been two-hundred-and-eighty games since the Cougs have been shut out. That goes back to the Eight-Four season. But the Cougs couldn't get it across mid-field let alone coming close to scoring any points.

As the game went into the second half I was getting nervous abut the streak. By the time we were in the fourth quarter I was starting to think it wouldn't happen. I was thinking the streak would be over. And sure enough, the Cougs were shutout. I was so mad. It was stupid to play a QB that was hurt to the point that you didn't do anything that could possibly hurt him. If he is so hurt why put him in? We have a bad season. The only thing we had going was the shutout streak and that was let go. I am so mad about it. It is incredible.

I didn't want to do much of anything for the rest of the night. We got one call that we took. It was a combative drunk. I had some fun with that. There was yet another fall from a high place tonight. But that was not a call that we took. It was the other station. The night over all was pretty quiet.

Long Busy Day and Night

Working at the fire department today I expected that we would do our weekly rig checks on the ambulances, have a community breakfast, and then I would work on my engineer workbook. What really happened was much different. Due to calls everything got thrown around.

We started by having the guys from the Deuce come down. They brought some food. We did our morning chores and started to make breakfast. I helped with the apple pealing. We were really getting the cooking underway. It was looking good and I was hungry. But before we could sit down and eat I was called away on the ambulance for someone who was hurt.

By the time we were done breakfast was done and they were working on the ambulance checks. I restocked the ambulance and the medic and I went in to eat before we helped with the rig checks.

We were not done eating when we got called for something else. I had to get up and walk away from my breakfast/lunch by the time I was eating it. We dealt with the call and were at the hospital. As we were close to leaving we got called to an unknown injury accident. On the way we were upgraded to a delta injury accident on a residential street in Pullman. We got on scene and transported two of the people.

By the time we were done with those two calls I got back to restock the ambulance again and finish my breakfast. But now it was time to start to worry about getting dinner ready. My breakfast took about six hours to have from start to finish.

I took the medic to the Deuce to pick up a couple things he had there. We got some stuff for dinner to go with the meatloaf and went to the station. I started on the weekly rig checks on my ambulance. The others had been completed so it was the only one that needed to be done. As I got going others came out to help when they had dinner cooking. I was able to get it almost completed before dinner, but not quite.

I sat down for dinner with the other guys. It was very good. Mashed potatoes and gravy with meatloaf. Following dinner I cleaned up the plates and dishes. I turned on the Cougar game. They were in the game against UCLA. I was watching the game for a while. Then I went to the training room and turned on the game there. I also grabbed the photoboard to update it. We had a big change up with where everyone was working so I had to update the board to show those changes.

I went to the bay to turn off the lights and I saw the Ambulance Thirty-Five book. I was going to put it away when I realized I didn't have a weekly check sheet completed for it. So I pulled one out and started to work through the engine fluid checks and filling out the form.

One of the reserves who was working the volleyball game came through to put away the equipment that he used. I stopped and talked to him for a few minutes. We talked about the other night that we went out as well as the Cougar volleyball game we worked. We are hoping we will get a chance to go out with the old reserves again on Apple Cup in a couple weeks.

I went back to my bedroom after that was done and continued to watch the Cougar game. But the Cougs were losing and they were not able to get more than a single fieldgoal. They ended up losing by twenty-five points. I watch some TV for a little bit then I decided to go to sleep.

It had been quiet more of the evening. But by a little after eleven we started to get called out and we ran eight calls over the next four five hours. We made it back to the station once. I was able to get restocked and started to make entries into the log book when we got called out for a second set of runs. It was a busy night. I finally got to bed for real around four in the morning.

Another Cougar Downer

I got up this morning to a phone call and decided to stay up. I got cleaned up and grabbed some breakfast. I got a hold of Bien and he gave me a ride to my car downtown. I also talked to Dearth. He was going to get cleaned up and then we were going to meet up and head to Tyson's trailer.

I parked just off of campus and waited for Dearth. Him and a friend of his picked me up and we drove out to Tyson's trailer. We were playing beer pong and having some ribs that Dearth grilled up. A while before the game we walked to the parking lot near the vet building to see Wehrung. The guys were happy to see him. We talked for a bit. He handed me a flask and said "here Probie".

We went back to Tyson's trailer and got ready to walk back for the game. We made our way to some seats under the scoreboard in the endzone. Within now time the Cougs were down two touchdowns.

The game went down hill from there. We did score two touchdowns along the way. Bien, Dearth, and the girls left at half time. I stayed until the end of the game. When the game was done I got my car and went home. I grabbed something to eat real quick and drove out to Tyson's camp. They were playing some beer pong again.

I continued being a designated driver for the night. I took McPherson, Bien and the girls to Mike's. I went back to the camp. We sat around a little fire talking and chowing a little bit. Dearth started to fall asleep so he had be give him a ride to the place he was staying.

I said goodbye to Tyson and left. I went to Mike's and worked on finding Bien. When I got there I ran into Faber. It took a while to work my way downstairs. Finally when I was there I looked around the dance floor and found him. It was really crowded down there. I made my way up to him letting him know I was going to have to head home for the night. I was very tired and I wanted to get to sleep.

First Cougar Win

After the test was done at the SO I went home and cleaned up. I went to the fire station to help make lunch. I was the griller. I cooked up all the hamburgers for everyone. I spent a while working the grill in the process.

The guy who found started the string of events recently was at the station. I told him I wanted to talk to him. After I was done eating I asked to chat with him in the bay. I started by saying "I heard you found something funny on the Internet".

From there we talked about what had happened. I told him I was disappointed that he didn't respect me enough to not make fun of me. I told him by giving that there person some grief about what he read also was making fun of me.

He said he was shocked to find out that I am gay. He didn't know up to that point. He felt like he was left out because it seemed that everyone else knew. Even the guy he was giving a hard time knew. I was surprised to know about that. I didn't know that he knew. I wonder how he found out. Sounded like it was a non-issue with him. He has known for a while it sounds like. But this other guy didn't seem to know why I was upset about the whole thing. I am not sure after we were done talking that he knew. I asked him if he would at least not tell anyone else.

It is not even that big of a deal that people find out that I am gay. It is not like I can stop people from finding out. Like I told this guy I don't tell people. I let him know I actually only told one person at the FD that I am gay. They other found out from other means. Over time others find out. Most of the time people have known for a long time before I find out that they knew.

I also let him know that I don't like how people self-censor when they know. He said that he wished he had known because he had made some comments in the past that he felt bad about now that he knows I am gay. I said that is the point. I don't want people to not be who they are when I am around.

My position was working at station two today. I took my engineer book down there and worked hard on it. I am trying to get it done. I stayed there working on it until almost ten. That is when I was going to get released from working.

But we got a medical call. Following the medical call we got a fire call. I ended up working an extra hour.

The Cougs today were on TV. They looked good, but they were playing an easier team. We however lost the starting QB. Later on our backup QB was hit and he was taken off the field in an ambulance. Not a good situation.

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.

Bien's Going Away Dinner

The plans for the morning after working out was to do the call with NU and work on my Windows Home Server. The call lasted around thirty minutes. Windows Home Server took longer. At first the install was crapping out. Finally I got it to fully install and for it to connect to my desktop. I also got my laptop set up. I then put one more hard drive into the server. I have a total of three five-hundred GB hard drives in the system. I copied all the data from my external drive to the system and have it set up to do a redundancy. I believe that my data should be pretty well protected.

Wilcox and I went to get the new rescue and get it back in service. We had to pick it up and move the tools over. When we were at station one I was given a pair of leather fire boots. I am happy about that. From what I have been told they are lighter and more flexible to work in.

We went to the Deuce to start on the BBQ. Bien was running late. So when the food was ready he wasn't there. But neither were the guys from station one because we started to get a couple calls when the dinner was supposed to be ready.

It turned out only the reserves were there without Bien. It was sort of funny that the dinner just wasn't working out very well. I invited Heston to come down as well. He was going to work the baseball game until we could get a couple people up there to relieve him. Chipper and I ended up relieving him.

The Cougs were getting blown out by ASU. We were standing at the top watching the game and talking. Heston left after a little while. While we were there a foul ball came right at us. Chipper got out of the way really fast, I sort of leaned to the side. It hit less than a foot from where we were standing. It then bounced off the top of the brick wall and towards the crowd.

People saw us get out of the way and one guy was giving us a hard time that we were supposed to protect the people yet we were getting out of the way. I said that if the ball was on fire I would have run to it. He then said out loud to other in the crowd to give us a round of applause. As they clapped Chipper and I were a little embarrassed.

Following the game it was pretty dead. There were a couple EMS calls but nothing for the engine to do.

Better Weather for Softball

This afternoon the weather was not snowy and it was a lot better for softball. It was a little on the wet side still. I worked the WSU Baseball game first. The Cougs had a big first inning with seven runs, but then let the game slip away.

Later I was on my way to the Valley Road Playfields for some softball. The first game was coed. It was a FFT because not enough women showed up. That is part of the reason why I hate running the coed team. But as a returning championship team I had to put it together again.

Then it was off to our men's games. The first game my hitting woes continued. I have been having a hard time seeing the ball or something. I am swinging and missing when I shouldn't. Then there is the whole not making good contact on the other times I am hitting it. We won the game pretty easily. Dave pitched a one-hit shutout.

The second game was against a better team. We battled after being down by eleven runs. We got two back and then battled some more. We had an eight run inning getting us closer. But they were still scoring runs.

We were having some issues with the field umpire hesitating on calls and making a blatantly bad call. That took us out of three innings. We still came close. We put the winning run to the plate with two guys on. But when the batter hit the ball, the umpire didn't see the play at first. He hesitated on the play. Didn't know what happened and called our guy out for the final out of the game. That was madding. We were not very happy about it. We ended up losing that game.

Ryan came over to my place. We watched the Sunday night Fox shows and ate some pizza.

Microsoft Launch Event

Brandon, from Whitman Co IS, and I made our way to Spokane through the nasty roads due to the snow that fell over night. We were up there for the Microsoft Launch events. We got a neat lunch bag that had some food and is very nicely made. I really can see me getting use out of it in the future as well.

They also gave everyone a copy Visual Studio Two-Thousand and Eight, Sql Server and more. It was great. I will be installing it laptop soon.

Brandon and I walked to a nearby mall for lunch and then back to the event for the afternoon session. The afternoon event went until after the Cougar Basketball game started. They were playing UNC in the Sweet Sixteen. But after about the first fifteen minutes the game started to go down hill with UNC getting a lead we couldn't catch up and lost the game.

Lots of Pullman Fire Activities

It started out with going to the fire station and talking to Drew about the training I had planned for the evening. Then I went to Kruegal park to take photos of the Easter Bunny that was delivered by the fire department.

I went home and started to build the website for displaying the photos that I took at the park and from the stair climb in Seattle. I got that close to being done when I had to run out to Pioneer Center for taking photos of the badge pinning ceremony.

After that I went home and started to watch the Cougs playing basketball against Notre Dame. Not a lot of people gave them much of a chance. After the first half I went to Kevin's place where Brandon and Kendall were there. We watched it together. It was great. The Cougs went on to win by twenty points. They held ND to forty-one points. Their lowest point total of the season.

I had enough time to rush to the fire station for training. I went through all the objectives and safety items. Then we went to the tower. I got the fog machine going and did the final setting up of the scene.

Drew started the scene with his arrival report and walk around. Then I had units show up in an order like they would in a real call. Drew directed teams to do certain things. The only problem was the smoke machine ran out of smoke and the room cleared out really well, so one of the things I did to test them was obvious. I had put a baby in the hallway. I wanted them to do what they would do in a real situation depending on what they found. I put it there in such a way that they wouldn't see it. The only way they would find it would be by accident. But with the lack of smoke it was easy to see. They did react just right however. So that was good.

After the event was done we went to the fourth floor of the building to clean up some bird droppings and remove the birds that had taken up residence. We put the rigs back in service and went back to the station.

Brandon and Kevin were waiting for me at the fire station. I was running really late. I wanted to be done by seven-thirty. We weren't done until nearly eight-thirty.

They came back to my place. We had some lasagna and bread. We played several games until around two o'clock in the morning. It was a fun night with those guys.

Round One Down

I had to go to the softball meeting for IM softball today. When the was done I went to My Office. I watched the Cougar game on TV. It was a great game in the second half for the Cougs. It was tied going into to the break. But then the Cougs went out there and started to really kick some butt.

After the game was done guys came down to meet up with me to sign the roster and pay for the team. I still have several other people to sign the roster. Many others also have to pay me still.

Out on the Bubble

This morning I worked a WSU Women's basketball game with Wilcox. We didn't really talk to each other much. But it has been like that forever. We really only have small talk conversations. The Cougs lost the game and ended up tenth place in the Pac-Ten.

When I got home I spent time working on cleaning my driveway and sidewalk of rocks and other debris. I had a ton of stuff on the driveway and it looks very nice now. I also got my laundry taken care of as well. It was a good day as far as that goes. But now I need to work on finishing up the garage. I have some clutter that is being built. With a nice day I could get out there and pound it out.

Later on I went to Zeppoz for the poker tournament. It was a new tournament structure. They made us do a ten dollar buy-in. A lot less people were there. I am sure it will build back up, but I was doing pretty good. I wasn't really losing too much. I was maintaining for a long time. I did an add-on during that period and it was off to the eliminations.

I made it a long way. I finally started to get some hands and I was winning the hands I got. Then the dealers changed. My first hand was pocket-Kings. I didn't get anyone to call my raise on the blinds. My next hand was pocket-Sevens. There was a raise pre-flop with four people going to the flop. The flop was Seven-Seven-Ten. I had quads. I was last to act. There were two checks. A minimum bet of one-thousand. I called. The other two folded. The turn came with a check from the person who bet. I bet one thousand and I got a call. Finally the river. Another check, I bet three-thousand. No call. So I didn't have to show my hand. I threw it away.

But I started to get bled away as the blinds were so big. Pretty soon it was down to three. I was on the bubble with enough for the big blind. One caller. I have two-three. I was hosed. The other guy had King-Two. I was out of the tournament.

I had a good time. On the way home I treated myself to a Blizzard from Dairy Queen. I watched some TV and completed my laundry before going to bed.

EMT Class Help

Started the day driving to Steptoe for the EMT class. I was doing more medical assessments. My roll was mainly to help people with doing a medical incident. I made up some scenarios and run the groups through it. I did that for most of the time there. I also helped with some check-offs on using the long bone splint for a femur fracture.

For lunch a group of us went to Colfax fire for some pizza and watched the Cougar game. Well we watched the tip-off and the first points scored by the Cougs. We were back at the school until around four in the afternoon.

When I returned I went to the Dodge dealership to look at their trucks. I found one fifteen hundred. But with what I would get for my truck and what they wanted on that truck I would not be making a good switch. I want to reduce the overall amount owed on the truck. I would have only reduced what I owe by about two grand and I would have added about forty-five thousand miles to the rig. Not a good trade off.

I will keep looking until I find the perfect truck and the perfect deal for me.

I went to the Rec center and did a cardio workout. Then I swam five laps. My legs were tired and I was really not swimming super well. But I chalked that up to having just done twenty minutes of cardio.

After the Rec center I went to the casino and played with about forty bucks. That didn't last forever. Russell was there. He was looking at getting off pretty soon. I was going to give him a ride. But I got a call from Avalon about transporting a person from the hospital. When I was done it was after three in the morning. I went back to the casino wearing a polo shirt and slacks. At first Russell glanced at me thinking I was someone else.

He got off and I gave him a ride to Nick's apartment. I went home and called it a night.

Done Stewing

I woke up this morning and started to think about what I was told last night by Chapman. I can say I was very mad about it last night. I stewed about it as I went to bed and I stewed more about it today.

Around ten in the morning I called the other person who was in the vehicle when the incident happened. He backed up what I believed had happened. So I was happy that I had remembered the situation correctly. That made me relax a little bit and enjoy the rest of the day.

We had a couple car accidents go out at the same time later in the afternoon. So I went to the station to help out but I ended up standing by with one because no one else showed up.

I had to be back at the station to meet with Turpin and Parrish about some training things that are going on. When that meeting was done I spoke with Turpin about some of the issues that were brought up with me about various things. I let Turpin know that I had made a mistake in letting a specific person to drive code. I think I misunderstood something from the training officer. I told him what I should have done in order for this mistake to not have happened.

Then I talked to Chapman some more about last night. I got a little bit more and confirmed what I had already understood about what had been said about me. By this time in the evening I was pretty calm and decided that it probably wouldn't do any positive changes by bring it up with the person or anyone else. I felt that it was best if the whole thing was dropped and it just went away.

The whole drama thing just takes away the fun from the fire department. I just would like it to go away and for the business of being a firefighter and not a whiner would be in the forefront.

I watched the Cougs on TV with John at the station and we saw them crush Cal. I just wish they had done that last time they played.

EMT Extrication class

Started the day with Extrication class in Colfax. I got my turnouts from Colfax. My role was at photographer and as a trainer on some of the scenarios. I would set someone up in the car and help people with how to take them out of the car. Later on when we were cutting I mainly was taking the photos of everything. I ended up with more that four-hundred photos on the day.

I worked the Cougar Basketball game. We need to be able to beat Arizona, but we were not able to do it. I don't know why we are having some of the problems this season that we didn't last year.

It sucked to lose to them. That sort of put a damper on the day.

Grandpa Patterson Died

I got an e-mail from my mom today telling me that Pat died today. I called her to ask about some of the details. Sounds like he was sick and in the hospital for a couple days. But it was known by people that it looked like there was going to be a poor outcome. He died during the day on Saturday. So I have a funeral to go to when I am back home.

I made plans to meet up with Brandon and Kevin tonight. Russell also wanted to come over and watch the Devil's Rejects. Kevin and Brandon also came to watch that.

In the morning I woke up in time for going to the Cougar Basketball game. I went up there with the fire department. Only four of us worked the game. The Cougs were playing a great game. They crushed USC. If they had played like that during the last couple games they would have won those games too.

On the way back from the game they toned for reserves to call the station for a transfer. I went on it. So that pushed back the time I met up with the guys. Because I was in Colfax I stopped by the fire station to pick up my W-Twos. I washed the ambulance when I got back and went to pick up Russell and Nick. Brandon and Kevin came over.

We had pizza and watched the Devil's Rejects. Following that movie I took Russell and Nick home. When I got back Kevin, Brandon, and I played Racko and Mexican Train Dominoes. We stayed up until around three in the morning playing games.

It was a great time with them.

Another Loss, Not Good

The Cougs should have beaten UCLA today, but that did not happen. It was sucky to watch as they could not get anything going. The shooting was poor. We couldn't play great defense. We couldn't score when it mattered. We went on to lose again.

I spent a lot of time on the phone today with Ricky trying to get my computer set up and running with the certs and receiving credit reports. This is a problem that until it is fixed I cannot do anything about fixing the issue in my inbox.

Another Cougar Loss

I worked the men's basketball game today. I had to be at the station around ten in the morning. I had worked last night for the fire department, but it was pretty dead.

The Cougs didn't do very well on the court. The first half they were rebounding well. They were making it look like Stanford would be going down. Then in the second half we couldn't do anything to work towards a victory. We ended up losing by two. Taylor had a chance for a lay-up at the very end of the game, but missed it.

The evening I was going to be on call for C-Shift. I was looking forward to being on Rescue. We got calls steadily through out the night. I helped to find the cause of a fire alarm in a frat. Plus every time I went to bed, I would get woken up by the tones. We had calls to the point where I was up for every hour through out the night even though I had gone to bed twice.

WSU Closed for First Time in More Than a Decade

This morning the snow was really falling. After my workout I was driving home and thought to myself how close today would be to a closing the school day that we had. The roads were abnormally snow covered. It was still falling and things were looking bad.

When I got home I asked Tyson to move his cars so I could use the plow to move snow that was in the area in front of the driveway and move it aside. He came out to do that plus he shoveled the sidewalk and helped a person get unstuck.

I ended up plowing Eric's driveway and a girl up the street who needed to get her car out to take it to the doctor. I spent some time driving up and down the street plowing the road. I didn't even try to do the sidewalks. There is just too much snow.

I was on my way to fuel my truck when the tones went off. I was in front of the station so I popped in. Soon the tones were going off for something else. Wilcox came down and we went on calls for the next couple hours. It was pretty busy. Nothing big, just lots of little things.

In the process of plowing, I was jarring my back enough that I tweaked in. So it hurt to walk or stand up. Going on the calls was hard. I was down on the ground to help someone and the others could see I was in a good amount of pain.

That morning word came that WSU was closing at ten in the morning. It was the first closing of WSU since the floods of the ninety-five/ninety-six school year.

The basketball game went on as scheduled. Cal came out and we just looked bad. We lost to Cal. It was very disappointing. By the time the game was done I wanted to get to bed so I could get up at my early time. Russell called to invite me over, but I didn't answer it because I was already in bed.

I got to be on Rescue

Went swimming today at around ten o'clock. I had gotten up a couple hours earlier. I heard Colfax get toned to an echo response. Shortly after Steptoe got on scene they cancelled the ambulance and called for Paul-Sixty-Four. I called Whitman and let him know that if he needed help I would be willing to do what I could for him. He did say he probably didn't need the help now, but he was thinking about getting me to cover the afternoon for him. I told him that I was doing the Cougar Basketball game and working for the fire department. Besides you are not getting two calls in one day anyway.

While swimming I was able to get the length of the pool once without breathing at all. That was pretty cool. I am going to have to work on that so it is not so hard in the future.

After the swimming I got cleaned up and headed to Beasley for the women's basketball game. I called for KStew to come over because he was working for the police. I wanted to talk to him about softball. Specifically I was going to ask him to help me with the team. He said he would do so. We talked softball for about an hour. Heston came by like he said he would. He also plays softball with us.

KStew left and within a few minutes of leaving he called me. He said "speaking of the coroner" they just got sent to another call. I was pretty shocked. I tired to listen to the county to figure out what was going on.

After the women lost the game I went to the station to put the equipment away and went to the Deuce. While I was there a call came in. I stood by for that call. I was there for almost an hour because of the call.

I went home for dinner. Then back to the station. I was watching the Cougs. They were playing Arizona State. It was a very close game. It came down to the final shot taken and missed by ASU. So the Cougs won. That made me feel better.

I was on Rescue tonight. We went to the hospital to change out the linen from the Beasley first aid room with new stuff. We also dropped off some more boxes of gloves.

We only had a couple of calls and they were not much of anything. I made the guys wash Rescue with me after the calls. At first they didn't want to. I said we were going to wash Rescue. They said I outrank them, so they helped wash it. They figured we would have a lot of calls and just wanted to wash it once at the end of the night.

We were supposed to get a lot of snow tonight, instead it rained. But tomorrow we are supposed to get something like seven inches of snow. I will believe that when I see it.

Cougs Roll On

There was some drama today when two reserves took a transfer. Several people are up in arms over it. They are mad because that could set a precedent for the future. I was at the station when a couple guys were talking about it.

Later I went to Beasley with the other guys to work the Cougar Basketball game. It started out slowly for the Cougs. Oregon was scoring and the Cougs couldn't. Oregon held on the lead most of the game. But the Cougs chipped away at it.

In the final minutes of the game the Cougs were even with the Ducks. Then it went to a shot made by the Cougs putting us up with less then forty-five seconds to go. The Ducks took a shot and missed. The Cougs rebounded. The crowd which was already very loud, got very very loud. The Ducks fouled the Cougs. And from there we just kept adding points as we would make the free-throws and get rebounds off of the Ducks' misses. It was great to see the Cougar victory.

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.

Purchased More Tools

I stopped at Pullman Building Supply to pick up some more tools for my project. I have new saw blades, router bits, clamps, and more. I am excited to get to use them.

I went out to the garage to start to use these new tools. How nice is that? I made my cuts on the frames to make them have angled corners after I "measured twice, and cut once".

I also got the Cougar basketball game on the radio as I was working on the frames. I was getting places. The Cougs were playing the Huskies and were trailing for much of the game. I put a pizza in the oven.

With four minutes to go on the pizza, the tones went off. There was around two minutes to go in the basketball game. I had to turn off the oven. We ended up going code to the scene so we were not able to hear the end of the game while driving there.

But due to the cramped conditions inside the house we were told to stay at our vehicle. That allowed us to listen in as the Cougs won the game. We were cleared shortly thereafter. I figured I would get warm pizza. But instead we were quickly called to another location.

We were first on scene and transported. Following the transport, I got my pizza. It was cold. I heated it up a little bit, but it is never as good the second time around.

We got a couple more calls on the night, but nothing major.

Hanging with Mike D

Today was the final day of the men's basketball pre-Pac-Ten games. It was a pretty easy victory for the men. I worked it with Nick. I spent a fair amount of the time talking to the WSU cops. We first talked about a recent death that took place on campus. It was a pretty tragic thing.

Later on I was just chatting with a couple other ones about Colfax PD. One of them was a Colfax cop for a while.

Towards the end of the game the Cougar starters were all on the bench to make way for the young guys to get play time. They got a lot of it today.

I got a text message from Mike D. He was in town for the basketball game. He asked if I was interested in going to Pete's for Wiley's. I was on call for the Coroner so I could not drink, but I wanted to see Mike. It has been a while. He now lives in Montana.

I drove down there in the Bumblebee when I saw that Pete's was closed. Soon I saw three people walking down the road including Mike. He had two girls with him and that all had Wiley glasses. We ended up going to Rico's. I saw Johnson there. I gave him a howdy.

Then I was introduced to a guy named Nick. He was blue eyed and ten-six-seven. I also got some non-weedeater-owning vibes from him. Mike, the girls, and I went up stairs and played some pool. Soon Nick and the girl he was with joined us. At first I was thinking that he was her boyfriend. Later I found out he is not her boyfriend.

Peter and Kevin showed up. We were messing around texting each other. We were making some sort-of inside jokes about Nick being gay. Or really we were insinuating that he was gay. The thing about him was he was flamboyant and he was cocky at the same time. He was beating me in pool and we were really crap talking each other. I was doing it all in fun.

As the night was winding down and we were getting ready to go he was asking me some honest questions about buying or renting houses. I was trying to give him some good information. But with his intoxication level I was thinking at best he was going getting sound bites. He did let me know where he worked. I might poke my head in there someday. I am going to not write it in here as I don't want to give away who I am talking about here.

Calls Getting in the Way of Driving

I just couldn't get out of town today. It started in Pullman. I was up and getting cleaned up. I was thinking about the things I needed to pack to take with me. While doing that a call came in for someone who had fallen at Kamiak Park. I had never been there before so I was actually looking forward to heading there. I got a call from Dearth who also wanted to go, with some of the same feelings that I had about going to the park.

While en route it sounded like they didn't know exactly where we needed to go. The call was a relay from Latah County Sheriff. We were one of the last units to get on scene. We helped to get the equipment loaded onto a John Deere Gator that was being taken up a trail. The first units on scene split up on the trail where it forked. One crew found the person and we were sending the Gator in. We were told to get the ambulance ready by turning it around and heating up the back.

We went into the hospital with the person and then Dearth and I went back to the station. I had said that I am not responding on any additional calls. It was around noon when that one came in. It was nearly a two hour call. So I was getting behind the eight-ball in terms of getting home during the daylight hours.

I started to pack my stuff. I got everything prepared for me to be gone for almost three weeks. I loaded my truck. Dearth had asked me if I had chains for my truck. I am glad he said something. That helped me remember there were not in the truck. I put them in the truck and took out my Coroner's stuff.

I hit the road. There was a bit of snow on the roadway and it was snowing. It was slow going to Colfax. One truck decided to take his sweet time driving down there. But like I say, there is a reason for everything. I drove past Island street and looked down the road to the fire station. I thought that a call would have to pretty much come out right now for me to be able to go. Colfax had actually been out on a couple car accidents already.

Just as I was going to turn into the Rosauers parking lot we got dispatched to a roll-over car accident on Airport Road. The car was fully engulfed in flames. I went through the parking lot and got to the station. I put on my turn outs and hopped on Engine One.

We went to the scene. As we were getting to Airport road I didn't see a column of smoke. I said that outloud to Carl and Jenny. Shortly thereafter Carl said "Hey Scotty, there is your column." I could see a big column of brown-black smoke. We got on scene. I was packed up and ready to go. I grabbed a blitz line and went into the field where the car was burning.

It was about one hundred feet into the field. I called for water. Approached the car from a corner and started to spray the water. I got the fire on the ground put out. Then worked my way up. One thing I had to be aware of was that we had no hydrant. Only tank water, so I couldn't be wasteful. I got the passenger compartment of the car put out. Carl opened the hood of the car so I could put all that fire out as well.

I was able to get the whole thing extinguished on tank water. That was a good thing. Really this was my first real car fire that I started, attacked, and put out without anyone else doing anything.

After we got back to the station I helped to clean up everything. I went to Rosauers. I got some stuff for dinner. I hit the road. The Cougs were playing basketball. I was able to listen to the game on the way back. The roads had snow on them causing some slow going at times. Actually the pass and into Issaquah were the best parts of the drive. I was able to cruise along at a good clip most of the way anyhow. The Cougs won and I got home safely.

The One-Hundredth Apple Cup

Today was the one-hundredth Apple Cup. Ron invited me down to watch it at the Moose Lodge. I was excited about going down there. I put on my Cougar hat and shirt and made my way there just before kick off.

The Huskies ran it back for a quick score. Ron made a big deal about it. All the Cougs were thinking this was going to be a long day. The Huskies got a fieldgoal. Finally the Cougs were able to get on the board with a touchdown.

After a while everyone in the Moose was yellow "Woooooo" every time the Cougs did something well like Ron had been doing earlier.

We went into half time up by one point - twenty-one to twenty. Michele had a big spread of food there for a fundraiser. I had my fill of food.

The second half added to the excitement. The game was a sea-saw battle back and forth. The Cougs finally scored the tying touchdown. With only thirty seconds to go they scored the winning touchdown! The Cougs went on to win the game.

I went home fulfilled with the victory.

I went to gay.com and looked around on there to chat. While I was there I did a search of local people. I found someone that I recognized and I had no idea was gay. I finally purchased a premium account. I was able to look further at his profile. I was shocked to see he was gay. I want to talk with him because I also found out he use to be in the college Republicans.

I also found a former cop that I knew. I contacted him via a message. I finally went to bed in the wee-hours of the morning.

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.

The Boys see Cougar Football in Pullman

Today is the first time that Justin and Logan got to see a Cougar Football game in Martin Stadium. I woke up in the morning, but I was still a little tire. Jon took the boys out to find some ponchos. I stayed at home.

Later on I got up and worked on stuff for NU. I had breakfast with the guys when they got back. We started to get ready for the game. We stopped at McDonald's for lunch. We planned on parking in the old Sigma Chi parking lot. There was room so we did park there. We walked down to the fieldhouse. John called me and let me know Rob was in town.

I went to the ambulance that they were on. Rob was doing a ride along. I sat in the ambulance for a while talking and listening in on the stories. This is the first time I have seen Rob since he left the reserves to become a trooper. It was neat to see him. In someway it was just like the old days with him and John. Laughing and joking and having fun.

I went back to the fieldhouse to meet up with Jon, Logan, and Justin. We watched some of the UW vs Cal game. Cal was getting beat. It was close to time to head to our seats.

We made our way there. We were at the twenty-yard line, five rows back. While there I noticed a ten-six-seven. Blonde hair, blue eyes, with well defined arms. Number Thirty for OSU. He was on their special teams. He looked very ripped.

The game started with heavy rain. We all wore our ponchos to keep dry. The Beavers went out to a quick lead and never looked back. We turned over the ball so many times, seven interceptions and one fumble. It gave the Beavers short field all day long. The Cougs scored two touchdowns, but each time we scored the Beavers would quickly score. It was a horrible day for the Cougs.

After the game was done we left. The stadium was just over half full when the game started. It had maybe one-tenth the seating capacity filled when the game was done. With the poor showing and the bad weather a lot of people left early. But not us.

We went to Pizza Pipeline and got some dinner. Then back to my place to eat it. I went to my office after dinner to work on the NU Application some more. John, Rob, and I were going to go out, but they ended up bumming out.

I stayed at home doing work into the early morning hours.

The Boys are in Town

I volunteered to work a security shift at the burnt out building on True street. I was working it with Blanks. I brought my laptop and a couple movies to watch as the night went on. I was tired and was Blanks. We watched my movies which took us through the night. Blanks also went to Dissmore's and got me some pop and himself some drink. We started our shift at three in the morning and worked until eight. I went to bed when I got home.

In less than three hours I was up talking on the phone call meeting. It was short. I then started to work on some bugs I had to complete. I didn't have much time to do that because I was covering someone elses shift on KZUU. It was a noon to two o'clock shift. I talked a little bit about the fires, only things that were in the newspapers. I also played music. I had a couple callers who challenged some of the things I was saying about WalMart and building in Pullman.

I was working on stuff for work when Jon got here with the boys. I showed him around the house. The boys and I played some video games before going to Cougar Country to get some dinner. This is the boys' first time to Pullman.

After dinner we went to watch Cougar Basketball. They were playing UI. The Cougs went on to an easy victory.

We went back to Cougar Country to get the boys some ice cream. Then it was back to my place. They watched Shrek III. I went to my office to get some work done that I needed to do during the day, but I had to put off because of the radio show and Jon getting to town.

A Cougar Football Victory

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

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

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

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

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

Took the Day Off

Because of the basketball double-header I wanted to work it in Pullman. I decided to see if I could take the day off and head this way. It was okay with work. This morning I got up sort of early and got ready to head out.

As it turned out I was running later than I wanted to. I needed to be in Pullman by two-thirty in the afternoon. I got on the road, but I wasn't able to do some of the things I wanted to do before I left.

I got home in time to get my uniform on and get the things ready to work the basketball game. Wilcox and I went to the station and got the equipment necessary to work the game.

We got in with a couple career guys and went to Beasley. The women's game was pretty bad. They were getting crushed. Wilcox and I traded places from time to time working out on the concourse level.

After the women's game the men played. That game was a lot better. The men went on to win pretty darn easily.

When we were done working I went home did some stuff around the house to get caught up on the things I needed to do while I was gone.

Callers on the Show

The radio show included the topics of NBC's green week. Where they are sending crews around the world on jets, but they are doing the right thing and buying "Carbon Offsets". Also the usage of a gas-powered mower and what it does to the environment. When checking with various websites I found that no one agreed on the amount of damage.

I ended the show talking about the upcoming election and voting. That lead to the topic of whether students who do not register to vote in Pullman should have a say in the city government. A couple people called up and gave their opinions on the subject. It was a good show.

I ended up getting out of training tonight because I needed to work the WSU Women's Basketball game. I worked it with Bien. While there we talked about him becoming a crew leader. I asked him what he would do differently as a crew leader. He had a hard time answering the question. I was thinking there was something he wanted to say, but was afraid of saying it to me. He did say there was very little he would change about the way I do things.

Doing a Transfer

Shortly after I got up this morning I was in my den when I heard the tones for a transfer. I was waiting for the reserve tones when I got a phone call asking if I could do the transfer. I said I would.

I went to the station and we went to Spokane for the transfer. When it was done we went to Outback Steak House for lunch. On my way back I was in Colfax when I got a call about the men's basketball game at Beasley. I said I could work it.

Heston was up there manning the first-aid room until I was able to get there. I called a lot of people and I was finally able to get Parrish to work it with me. We went to Beasly and signed in.

Heston stuck around until the game was over with. Parrish and I went back to the station and dropped off our stuff. The men's team was playing LC State. They had no problem beating them.

After having been gone almost all day. I went home to watch Shark and Cold Case.

Work a small wildland fire

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Cougar Football Win

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Ankle Doesn't Hurt

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

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

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

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

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

All of us hangiong out with Russell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Palousitics Party

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

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

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

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

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

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

First Wildland Fire in Pullman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cougar Football Saturday!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gridiron Classic

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

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

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

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

We went on to a pretty easy victory.

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

Engineer Training at the Tower

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

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

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

Working Cougar Baseball

I put in a lot of work between yesterday and today to get the events something I can show off. I made an appointment to see Heston and show him what I have done. He had a couple suggestions that I put into place.

I was also working the WSU Baseball game tonight. Bien and I went to the field. The Cougs jumped out to an early lead and never looked back. They went on to beat UCLA. After the game Bien and I got some food from Jack in the Box and went to the fire station to chow.

We washed and fueled the van so the guys could take it to California for extrication training tomorrow.

I spent most of the evening at home working on the application for signing up for events. I also took some time to watch some TV.

Bummer of a day

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

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

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

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

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

Fantasy Baseball Owners Meeting

Ryan and I joined a fantasy baseball league that Phil is putting together. I am the team owner and Ryan is the manager. Tonight is our meeting to talk about the league rules.

When I woke up today, however, I was going to "get my day in court". I was going to get my meeting with Heston. After last night and my conversation with Chapman I was not all that excited about it, not like I was before the Chapman talk. Instead of getting up and calling Heston right away, I worked on a bug for a while.

I was finally able to get to a breaking point where I was getting stuck. I called Heston and he sounded really nice on the phone and wanted to meet with me. I arrived at the station. He started by apologising to me for the what he said to me in the E-mail. Then we talked about some of the things that Chapman and I talked about. He said it was not like the career guys were "telling" on me, but Heston said he in some way pried information out of them. So when the meeting was done things were all better.

I got home and was able to get the bug completed and checked it in. It was after that where I got ready to go to My Office for the baseball meeting and Cougar Basketball game. I got a good seat and ate a hamburger while watching the Cal Bears and UCLA game. Cal held on to win in OT.

Our meeting started and two guys who work at KZUU were playing. Shier from the Philosophy department is also playing. We went over some ground rules for the league during the meeting.

Once that was done a couple of us hung out for the Cougar game. The Cougs started out scoring a couple, but by half-time the Huskies were scoring in the paint all the time. It was hard to watch. The second half started and the Cougs went on a big run and took the lead. From there is was a battle, but the Cougs controlled it most of the way. By around the five minute mark it looked like if everything kept going the way it was, the Cougs would win.

Sure enough the Cougs pulled it out. Joe started singing the fight song and he was next to me to get me going. I was singing with him. Soon the whole bar was in on it. It was way cool.

Working Most the Day with the PFD

I was woken up by a phone call around seven-thirty in the morning asking if I could help with the first responder class testing. I said I would, and I was told to be there at ten in the morning. I was tire so I was happy about the extra sleep. I showed up to city hall. My task was to help Michael with one of the stations. My role was to do CPR and assist with what the testee was asking me to do.

After the testing Keith and I went to Cougar Country for lunch. We were planning on going out doing Engineer training. When we were getting the Engine ready we were called to an EMS call. We went on that. It turned out we both got dirty on it, so we washed out clothes at the fire station and went home to shower. When we finally got back to the station we were only going to have about one and a half hours to do some drive time. But we made the most of it. We drove a lot of the more narrow roads around the city.

We also made our way by Beasley a couple times to see the score board in the walkways. The Cougs were playing USC. When we went by the couple times the Cougs were losing. It was getting near time for us to start our rig checks. Keith and I got the rig back to the station.

Anthony was already there and the Cougar game was in its final moments. We watched the game get tied up. It went into overtime, and then a second overtime. The Cougs finally pulled it out and won.

Keith, Anthony, and I went out and washed Rescue and Engine. The rest of the evening we were on call. It was a slower night, but we were getting calls most of the night. We would get them about every two hours. In some ways I hate nights like that more than just getting slammed and then nothing.

UCLA and WSU Playing For First

Ryan came down from Spokane to meet up with me to go see the Cougs take on UCLA at Beasley. With a win by WSU and UCLA losing against the Huskies the Cougs could be in a tie for first place in the Pac-Ten. It was nice Ryan was able to come down. We met up at the Valley Road Playfields and walked to the game.

It was not to be, the Cougs got beaten pretty well in the second half. The Cougs could not score on a fast break and they could never get a sustained run. So UCLA kept a few points up on the Cougs the whole second half.

I had Anthony cover for me on Rescue until the game was done. Once it was over I got my uniform on and worked the rest of the night. It wasn't super busy for us. There was not a lot of partying out of the students after the game. I think a lot of the were tired after waiting outside for seats for up to nearly fifteen to twenty hours.

I Hate the Ducks

Oregon did it again, beating the Cougs at basketball. It seems like we don't have an answer for some of their guys. They just score and score. Granted our defense still does a good job and keeps the scoring low in comparison to the opponents' normal scoring output.

We lead most of the first half but struggled to break out with a long lasting lead in the second half. It was disappointing for us to go down to Oregon and most likely drop us from the top ten in the polls. I am sure we will be ranked, but not in the top ten. Only if we can finish out the season with wins we may get back to number ten.

I spent some time going through my blog and getting the labels added for some old entries. I need to go through and do it for more of them, but it is a slow process. I got about eighty completed out of the six hundred posts yet to do.

Working Late

So I made my way to Bellevue today. The trip wasnot too bad coming across the state. The roads were in pretty good shape without ice and snow. I got to Bellevue around eleven o'clock. I decided that I was going to get a lot of work done, or as much as I could.

I was working with Brian on some stuff. As always when working here people will stop by and get me side tracked on some other things. Which is okay. I usually have two or three things going at a time when I am over here it seems like. Always getting little things thrown my way as I am working on the bugs.

One of the things Brian and I were working on kept me preoccupied. So I worked on it a little after eight o'clock. I started to listen to the Cougar basketball game as well.

I decided I needed to get home and watch it on TV, plus there was not much more I was going to be able to get done. I got into my truck listening to the game. For most of the game the Cougs lead the Huskies. When I got home I watched more of it. But the Huskies started to play better after half time.

The game went down to the wire, but the Cougs stayed on top and ended up winning the game. That will help keep the Cougs ranked going into the final two weeks of Basketball.

Ryan Came to Town

Ryan came down today to see the Cougs play the Bears. We met up at Cougar Country for lunch to start the day. Then it was off to the game. The Cougs went out and pretty much dominated the whole game. They lead the whole way and really played well on defense. It wasn't until late that the Bears got some points going, but for a while the Bears were averaging seven points every ten minutes.

After the game we went to my truck and off to Safeway. I got some groceries for the poker game for tonight plus I thought I would get some other items that I needed around the house. I ended up spending about one hundred bucks. I got the stuff put away and started to set up for the game. I had Kelly coming over with a bunch of other guys. I also has some of my friends coming over including Ben and Dave from the softball team.

I gave Ben a hard time when he told me he got a job working over in Tacoma starting in March. He may come over and play one week with us or maybe two. I hope. I will miss having him around.

We had enough people that we broke into two different tables. I moved the furniture around in the living room to make room for the second table. We had about six people per table. I was doing well to start with but things started to go down hill after that.

Kelly brought over some guys from his softball team. But after winning some hands early on I started to lose, and pretty much spent the evening losing money. The game finally broke around midnight. Ryan helped me clean up a little bit and get my house back in order. Ryan left a little bit after midnight to go home. What is funny is I asked if he would play cards, at first he said no. Then later on he decided that maybe he would play for a little while. Then he ended up playing all night.

I had a good time having everyone over. I hope to do another game in the near future.

Another Men's Basketball Win

Stanford, number twenty-five in the country, came to town to play the Cougs. I was working for the fire department at Beasley. As far as work went it was a pretty quiet day. I was disappointed that we did not even have a packed house. But the Cougs did just fine against Stanford. We didn't really have patients to deal with.

In the end the Cougs won by thirteen avenging the loss earlier at the hands on Stanford.

WSU Girls Basketball

Tonight the women were playing basketball at Beasley. I went there to work EMS. The men were on TV. I was watching that game in the first aid room and working on my homework for my Firefighter Instructor I class that I am going to be taking this weekend in Colfax.

The women lost, but the men went on for a victory. It was close near the end, but it was nice to see them get away with a victory. They are climbing up the polls after each victory.

Cougs Lose a Close one to Oregon

I wanted to work the Cougar basketball game and it turned out I was able to. Because of the number of people going to the games they want more EMS working. We had a total of six people working it.

Clint and I were one team. We started off in the student section watching the crowd and the game. The Cougs started off good and kept the lead nearly the whole game. But in the final minute of the game Oregon got the game very close and with less than a second on a the close the Cougs were called for a foul that put Oregon to the line for two free throws. That put the game into overtime. Oregon had a ten to zero run and held on to win by three. It was very disappointing.

After the game I went to Zeppoz to play some poker. I was able to get a seat at a table that opened up. I played for several hours. As normal there is one guy who thinks he is a pro. He does everything correct and someone else is always dumb for a move they make. I hate people who are like that.

I played until nearly four in the morning. I was up about sixty bucks when I went against another guy. We were heads up and I had trip queens. I thought I was strong and that he was trying to push my off my hand. But he had a full house due to the river giving him an eight. So I lost that hand. That cost me most of my winning. I played a while longer after that. But I walked away with the same amount of money I came to the poker table with.

Cougs Beat up Oregon State

Today we had a department meeting with the chief's. There wasn't a lot of new information for the reserves. The response codes have hardly changed for us, however, the full-timers will start to see a change on Feb one.

After the meeting it was time to get up to Beasley for the basketball game. I spent a lot of the game on the main walkway inside the building. I had a good view of the game. The Cougs were not dominating the game against Oregon State, but it was one where they were beating the Beavers the whole way through.

Next up number seven, Oregon Ducks.

Move in Poker Party Part Two

I was woken up by a call from Michael this morning. But once I was up I decided to stay up. I tooled around the house working on getting it ready for the poker game tonight. There was also the Cougar Basketball game on today against the Huskies. I knew it was going to be a wild game because they were calling in cops early due to all the people and problems they were having around Beasley.

I went to Safeway and got some regular groceries and some stuff for the poker game. I got home and I realized my trip to the hardware store was forgotten. I was going to get a screw to fix my pantry door that has had the wrong screw since I moved in. I was down at Turner when a call came in for a cardiac problem at the coliseum. I went to The Deuce. Michael showed up as well. We went on the call, but it did not turn out to be too much. We fueled up on the way back.

I went to the hardware store to only see they had closed. So I went home and started to get ready for the poker game. I was setting up the Tournament Director software I had. I got the cards counted and made sure the decks were good. I then got the table set up and the food ready to go. I made some last minute phone calls.

Russell was the first to show up. He got a pop and we started to talk about who all was coming. Soon others started to show up. Andrew and James showed up. Then a couple more people showed up. We all started to get ready to play the game.

I paid for the buy ins for most of the people because they had helped me move and missed my last game. Dan and Denise were there along with Andrew, Russell, James, Brad, and Tyson did not make it.

I was doing pretty well through out the tournament. Andrew bought in a couple times. When he was near the end the final time I talked him through the "chip and a chair" thought process. He started to earn his way back into the tournament.

But soon Andrew, Brad, Denise, and James were out. It was Russell, Dan, and I. But I was not getting any cards to speak of. I was finally eliminated in third place. Dan and Russell went head-to-head. But Russell was going to have to get going. Dan was going to be playing by himself and that would mean that Russell would lose his chipstack to blinds and Dan would win.

But Dan was nice and decided to play with Russell on the next couple hands. Russell ended up finding a hand. Dan went all-in. Russell covered and won. So Dan pretty much let his first place finish go to second place.

After the game I cleaned up a little bit and went to Zeppoz with Dan and Denise. We play a couple different table games. I ended at Texas Shootout. I started to win some money there and walked out near even for the evening at Zeppoz.

Busy Saturday Evening

The day started out late as I stayed up pretty late myself. Then as the evening got closer I got ready for the fire department early. I wanted to go there and watch the football game. The Seahawks were playing the Cowboys in the first round of the playoffs. There was also a Cougar basketball game tonight versus Arizona.

I had linen and other items that I had to deliver up there. I dropped off Anthony and then drove around the block as he dropped off the linen because the place was so full for parking. When I was coming back to Beasley we had a call so I drove past Anthony and we was looking at me wondering what I was doing. I knew he didn't know there was a call because he did not have a radio.

We went inside. Because I was there I got the linen changed out and then we worked on fixing up the cabinet and getting rid of the blue jump bag. We were also getting glimpses of the basketball game.

We took off and went back to the station. We started to get calls and between the calls we would watch the Seahawks game. It came down to the final snap by the Cowboys where Romo bobbled the ball and the Seahawks stopped them from scoring. That allowed the Seahawks to move on to round two of the playoffs.

Then we watched the Cougar basketball game. That was very close through out. The Cougs lead most of the way, and then it went to overtime. The Cougs took a lead and kept it the whole way. I got a call in the finally minute of overtime so I had to listen to the last few seconds on the radio. The Cougs won! They beat number seven Arizona.

The call we got took us up to Palouse. We got on scene and were almost immediately turned around for a delta in the city. We got on scene of the delta call as they started the transport. So we cleared and went back to the station.

Following three nearly back-to-back-to-back calls we went on one last one where a couch was on fire. We were not first on location, but due to the difficulty of finding it we drove around the block and ended up getting to the scene first. We cleared the engine, put out the fire, mopped up, and did the report for the call.

I got home around three-thirty in the morning.

First Coroners Case of the year

I started out the morning out with a meeting in the jail in Colfax. It was time for the Sheriff to just open the floor to discussion and to talk about some plans and goals on the year. I was at the meeting until around nine-thirty in the morning.

I got back to Pullman and had some lunch. Just then my neighbor came over with some food for me. It was a soup-type item. I had eaten so I took it and put it into my fridge for later.

The Culligan guy showed up to look at my system and determine what kind of water softener I need. I am going to get away with the cheaper one because I have the smaller pipes. That is scheduled to be installed next week.

I was working on spotting my gas meter. I am having an odor of natural gas around the stove from time to time. Parrish told me how to spot the meter. So I went around the house and shut down all the gas stops and checked where the meter was at.

I went to my office and got some work done for about fifteen minutes. I did not see any movement so that meant that the leak was not between my meter and the stops. So I had to turn on one appliance at a time and see which one would make the meter move. I turned on the stove and waited for about fifteen minutes. I went out and there was no movement.

I was going to turn on the other stops when Pete gave me a call about a case in Albion. I told him I wanted to go along with him. I left only the oven on and kept everything else shut down. The case took several hours. We had to call for Albion Fire to come help us move the deceased out of the bedroom. It has also started to snow like crazy around the time of the call.

The snow was piling up really fast. We had about six or seven inches in a matter of hours. The highways were getting closed due to the slide-offs and problems. We cleared the scene and made our way back to Pullman. We waited at the funeral home only to find the lady driving the body went the long way back to Pullman. She got stuck in the traffic and ended up turning around and going to Colfax instead.

I left Pete around five o'clock to go back home. I was working the Men's Basketball game tonight. I got to my place and checked my E-mail. Then I got ready and went to The Deuce for the game. I got some Little Caesars on the way.

The game was good, I was able to go in and out of the first aid room to watch parts of the game. We had a patient near the end of the first half and ended up dealing with her for the rest of the game. So I missed the rest of the game, but the Cougs won it.

Paying my Mortgage

Volk and I were working the women's basketball game against UCLA today. We were up at Beasley. We spent most of the time watching the TV coverage of Saddam's execution. It was finally hung near the seven o'clock hour our time. Not a lot of a change in my life, but it is an interesting thing.

The women lost to UCLA in the same way the men lost to UCLA. It was a close game up to the end, but then the Cougs had to foul UCLA when UCLA was up by one point. The scored two more on the free throws. The Cougs had a chance to tie it up, but missed the three pointer. The game ended just like the mens' game.

This was my first time that I had to pay my mortgage. I will have another three-hundred-fifty-nine times to do that. Well I hope in thirty years I am not still living here. I will want a bigger house some day. But I do like my house as it is right now. I wish it was a little larger at times, but over all it is great place.

Goodbye Coach Akey

I am saddened by the news that Coach Akey is leaving WSU for the Idaho Vandals. I hope nothing but the best for him and hope that someday he will come back as the Washington State Head coach.

We had the Colfax Fire Christmas party tonight. I went down to that. I bought one raffle ticket and ended up winning the main prize which was a quilt that Angela made. It is pretty neat and I was hoping to win that. People were giving me a hard time that I had only bought one ticket, then when I won they could not believe it.

We are still without power at work so I have been unable to get any work done. I hope that I can kick some butt on bugs when the power does come back on, I feel like I am getting way behind.

I went to the fire station in Pullman earlier in the day for fire training. We were doing stuff on setting up staging and rehab.

Horrible Day as a Coug

The Apple Cup today was supposed to be a victory over the Huskies. Instead I watched them celebrate on our field. It sucked really bad. I could not stand watching so many of the Huskie fans walking into the stadium as smug as they looked. It was like we were below them. I had one Huskie fan demand that I do something about the crowd. I was a "fire marshall" and I should do something about the crowd. I hate the dawgs!

Besides the crushing defeat of the Cougs I spent some of the evening at home with my mom. She came into town today to help around the house. She has been cleaning stuff up and putting away my kitchen stuff. She also brought over some baseboard and flatbar for the floor.

Cougs Go Down Again

Being on call and without cable TV I decided that I would hang out at the station and watch the game there. But I was disappointed to see it was not on TV at all even though the game had such a late start time. I was able to listen to it on the radio as I was doing my other tasks, but it was not a pretty sounding game. The cougs were spanked by Arizona State. That really sucked. The bowl hopes are fading with these latest losses.

The Blues

It sucks when the Cougs lose, it sucks more when they should have won to begin with.

Cougar Football Disappointment

It is Dad's weekend and I am on call for the evening. Arizona is in town to play the Cougs. Brian and I get Rescue ready and make our way to Station one for the meal followed by going to the stadium for the game.

We took our place on the East pad and went into our spot. It was a pretty tame game for calls for us, however, the Cougs were not playing well against Arizona. They were running circles around the Cougs. We could not hold our own against them and ended up losing. It is never fun to lose.

Following the game we went back to the station. I hung around the station watching some TV and waiting for a call to time in. It was a pretty tame night around town as well.

Another Victory!

My plan for the day was to play poker with Mike and watch the Cougs on TV. Plus I was going to be on call in the evening. The game started at two in the afternoon. The Cougar game started at four. I was doing really well on my table. I was up and winning some nice pots. But as the two hour mark came people were doing their add-ons and rebuys. I was finding my self to be out of the chip lead. Plus I had to leave in less that two more hours. So I started to play more loose. I got to the point where about twenty minutes before I had to leave I found a reasonable hand to push all-in on. I ended up losing out, but that was fine. I had to leave.

I got to the station and we did some training up at the training tower. It was more pump and roll training with the recruits. They just went through the training and I wanted to give them some more hands on time with it. The more you do it the more you know it is what I figured. They did pretty well at everything.

Following that I was down at the station for quite a while. We had a couple calls. One was a structure fire, but that did not really turn out to be much more than some fire under a deck. But we did some overhaul on it to make sure it was out. We also had some medical calls dealing with substance abuse. I hung out at the station for a fair amount of the night watching the final episodes from this season's Rescue Me. I finally got to see the final two episodes.

I decided it was time to go home and get to bed. I was not there very long when we got called out to another medical call. When leaving the hospital we got yet another call. We were running most of the night after about two in the morning. I did get to bed around five in the morning.

Hanging out with Ben

I got a call from Ben to start out my morning. We planning on meeting up and doing a short golf lesson and hitting the a bucket of balls. I met Ben at the golf course I paid my fees and bought a bucket of balls. I pulled out the seven iron and he started by telling me a lot of things about stance, holding the club, and the swing.

After getting through the bucket of balls my back was really hurting, but I was ready to get going. Ben's friend showed up and we started with our three-some. After the first hole there was a solo golfer behind us. We invited that guy to join us. He did so for the rest of the way we had a four-some. I was not having the best of days but I was holding my own. Ben would give me some instruction on the course when certain situations came up. He taught me how to get out of a sandtrap. After we were done with the round of golf Ben and I decided to go to the WSU baseball game that was underway.

We went inside and saw Mark from our softball team. We sat behind home plate a few rows back. The score was seven to zero in the first inning. The Cougs were doing well. But while we were there we only saw good pitching, with no offense to speak of. Towards the middle of the game Ben asked if I wanted to go to his place and get something to eat real fast then come back.

So we drove to Ben's and I had a beer and a TV dinner. We started to watch some of the Best of Will Ferrell. As we got into it Ben said we would go back to the game at three pm. So we left and walked back into the stadium. We got our seat. Started to get into the game. A guy from the other team hit into a double play and the game was over. We sort of laughed about the fact we came back for one more play.

We went back to Ben's apartment. We were going to watch a couple movies. When I got there he had the idea to hit the softball for a while. So we went to the playfields and hit the ball about thirty times each. Then we went back to Ben's apartment. We watched Caddyshack and Anchorman. I had never seen either of those movies. I was laughing so hard during them. Ben made a couple bags of popcorn. I could not believe how funny those movies were.

I talked to Ryan and we decided to go to dinner at Applebee's in Moscow. So Ben and I rushed over there. We sat down and ate. JT was our waiter. He gave us all free pop. That was nice of him. After we finished eating we decided to hit the bars in Pullman. Ryan was the one who really wanted to go. So Ben got his car and drove us to My Office. We got on the trivia and I had one more beer. We played trivia until about two in the morning. Ben offered me a place to stay for the night, but I decided to head back to Colfax and sleep there.

Today was a blast. I have not had a day like this for a while. Just being busy doing fun stuff, one thing after another. And on top of that getting a chance to hang out with Ben so long without other people around. It was just a wonderful day.

Finally! The box is working!

So the build is working. I got my box built and everything was working. The VI I had been assigned was rolled back and there was still something with reporting of application exports I needed to do. The DBA got the code I needed to add for the most part. All I needed to do was put it into the Webpage and make it work. There were a few things I had to fix, plus there was some data I had to figure out how to link to the SQL statements. Once I got that complete it all worked and life was good. I was able to check in my changes and move on with life.

When that was done the day was almost at an end. So I went home and watched some TV. Joe had sent me an E-mail about a new product to add to the database. I was going to try to get some other stuff done with the site, but by the time dinner was done I wanted to watch CSI. So I was watching that while the Cougs were playing Stanford in the Pac-Ten tournament. I was flipping back and forth. Then the game was down to the final minutes. The TV shows I like were done. Ryan called me and we watched the game together.

With less than ten seconds the Cougs were driving they had one last shot at the buzzer and it fell short. The Cougs lost by two and were knocked out of the tournament. It was disappointing, but the Cougs had a decent year and it will look better next year.

I got Joe's addition made to the Website and I did not work on the other admin stuff. I was getting tired so I went to my bedroom I watched some TV before I decided to go to sleep.