More Hanging with Keegan

Keegan and I got together this afternoon and headed down to Clarkston to do some shopping at Costco. After we got back we went to his place and sat around chatting. He is a good looking guy. I would love to do something more than just be friends with him, but I am not going to move it to the next level. I am going to let him make that decision. I don't want to push it if that is not where he would like to go with things.

I went to the fire station and we did our daily rig checks as well as listened to a police chase that was happening. They caught the guy which was good.

We got a couple calls this evening as I worked to redo the map tests for Pullman. It took several hours to update the maps. I was going to redo the whole entire thing but I realised quickly that it would take way too much time to do that with little gain. So I just retrofitted the old tests with new streets.

Watching the Championship with the Guys

I got up and went to the doctor for my follow up for my ankle surgery. I went to the Three Pigs to have lunch with Jon, Terry, and Jim. After that was done I hit the road to get back to Pullman. It wasn't a bad trip. I made pretty good time. When I got to Pullman I went to TBAG to meet up with Blake, Blake, Chia, Chris, and their wives for the BCS championship game. We had some beer while watching the game. I have Keegan come down and hang out. It was nice to get him there. He fit in well with them and they told me they likes him. I just wish he was more than just a friend.

When it was done Pitch and I went to Zeppoz to play some cards. Chia came along as well. We played poker until nearly one in the morning. I was up and down most of the evening, but I ended up losing it all in the end.

Keegan and I spent more time texting back and forth for a while as I was getting ready to go to bed.

A Crazy Busy Day

It turned out my trip to Seattle today was delayed until tomorrow. I was going to get going in the morning, but due to the fact I really didn't get my day started until after the noon hour I was behind the eight-ball. I started with a phone call for my new contract web job. It was clear that I should have read the e-mails. But from the ones I had read I was under a different impression. There are still issues with exactly what I need to get done. I guess I will get the UI work underway and work on hooking stuff up later on.

I went to Sprint to have my phone looked at. The year of some of my texts are coming back as twenty-sixteen. That was fixed by doing an update that was sent to my phone. I also considered updating my phone plan which will reduce my overall cost by about twenty bucks a month.

I went to the fire station to get some parts for a manikin for training tonight. I also talked to Ryan about getting the new maps made up for the map tests. I spoke with the chief about getting the career timesheets set up to work like the reserve timesheets I did. While I was showing the chief how it worked I found an error in a formula. The cells that I was looking for only covered about an eighth of what they should have covered. That meant I had a couple hours of work to update all the timesheets. That sucked. So when I got home I worked on that. It took me until nearly six to get done. But it is complete and I was able to update the server with the new timesheets.

I went to Colfax for fire training. We went over the King Airway. After practicing that I went to the SO to work on my supplemental report from the DUI from the other day. I also got my ticket written up and turned in.

When I got home I got a hold of Keegan on the computer. We went to Rico's and sat there talking for about two hours. It was good to chat with him. He is a good looking guy. But he is just looking for friends, so I am not going to cross any lines. After we were done I went to shake his hand and he preferred to hug. So I gave him a hug.

A New Friend

This evening we had weekly rig checks. It was only Parrish and I on duty tonight. We had a couple guys coming down to help us to the weekly rig checks. That was nice to have. It only took about two hours. Parrish and I had to go to the main station to get a couple things fixed before we went home.

I spent a while chatting online with a guy, Keegan, on g.com. We ended up having a great long conversation. He invited me to go have a coffee with him. He is only looking for friends. That is cool by me. He seems like a very nice guy.

Ought-Nine in Review

Jan - Mr. 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.

Feb - Final Mock Scenes - Today was going to be a long day. I was expecting to be done around three or four in the afternoon, but today was the day I was going to prove I could do the job, or I would prove I need more work, or that I am just not cut out for being a cop. I have spent sixteen hours a week for nearly the last five months

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

Apr - My Latest Oil Change - I have lifetime powertrain and bumper-to-bumper warranties. It has a DVD player built into the radio. I have a rearview camera and backup sensors. It has the Hemi with MDS so it shuts down some of the cylinders when they are not needed to help save fuel. It seems to have some get-up and go. It feel great to drive it. Plus it has the newer traction control system so I feel better about driving it on the bad roadways.

May - First Code Run - we got to the first address we needed to go to Endicott for a call to back up the others there. We were going code and just passed some cars on SR One-Ninety-Five. After we got past the Albion road a burglary in progress was put out in Albion. So I had to turn around and go back to Albion. So I went code past the cars I had just passed.

Jun - Contract with MH Terminated - Since April of Ought-Four I have been working as a software engineer for NetUpdate and then I was moved to MostHome when they bought out NU. I worked with them until I got notice today that my contract was going be terminated. The application that I worked on since I started with NU was a mortgage application. That was then sold to a competitor a couple months ago. I told MH that I wanted to remain on with them. But as it turned out the project I was put on just got sold off. So they are cutting their ties with me.

Jul - Second Class Reserve - I was told I was moved up to second class. They shook my hand and said they had great expectations for me. They all believe that I will do a fine job. That was great. Now, I just need to start to set up times to ride so I can work my way to first class.

Aug - Final Shift as a PFD Temp - We got on scene in the ambulance and were made into the backup team. We went to the attic where the seat of the fire was. Eric, who was on his first day back, was on the nozzle and put the fire out. It was still pretty small, but growing. It was lucky that we got there when we did and that the fire was not in the wee hours of the morning when it could have really taken off. I ended up putting in an hour and a half of overtime. So my full-time tally was one year, one month, four days and one and a half hours. It has been a good run.

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

Oct - IM Championship Bound - I hit the ball well, as did the team. Our defense was very good. We went on to win and go to the Semi-finals. We were playing a team that had been using an illegal bat. Once they were called on it, in the previous game, they couldn't hardly score. It turned out we shut them out. We scored nine runs. We didn't hit the ball as well as I would have hoped, but we won. Ryan said it best, this is the most worried I have felt in a shut out. We never had a big enough lead that put me at ease. Not until we scored the ninth run and the other team no longer had a chance to win because of the eight-run limit.

Nov - Gay Firefighter - Then I was asked a question about how I feel I am treated being a gay in the fire department. I said since I have been outed to everyone I don't feel that I have ever been treated poorly due to being gay. Chris let me know that he has known for years. He said that pretty much everyone on the fire department on the career side knows. He said there are probably only a couple people who don't really know. He said that they probably have been told, but think that people are screwing with them. It is without a doubt that the information is told to everyone. I am not sure who actually tells the others but the information is freely available. But once again no one treats me differently.

Dec - Search for Missing Hunter - I was teamed up with three young men. It turned out it was the son of the missing man and his friends. They wanted to put a member of the SO with each team going out searching. We were sent down the road a ways to start our search. The son was leading the way as he knew the area well. We made our way along some level ground. There was about four inches of new snow. It was covering rocks on the ground so we had to be careful where we stepped.

This years review shows many things that were related to being a reserve Deputy. I guess that is the major thing that has happened to me over this last year. I am now a sworn reserve law enforcement officer. Many of the writings I had through out the year dealt with the class or going out to patrol. I also had an unusual suicide where I was able to trace the night leading up to the death of a young man. It was very unusual and probably affected me more than any other death I investigated. It didn't make the list this year because the fact that I am a gay man who is a firefighter is something I am always thinking about. When it was finally brought up with some people I have never talked to about it before it was a big conversation to me. It was nice to hear his perspective. Ought-Nine was a good year overall. I had some frustrations at the fire department, but they were overall small in the grand scheme of life. I am jobless, but I do have a new contract where I will finally start to bring in some money again. It has been a year that I am happy with.

Seeing Pond After Ten Years

I went to Burien to meet up with Chris. He was taking me on another ride along. It is so a great pleasure to be out there with Chris. I love to see him working. He has found his calling by being a cop.

It was pretty quiet over all. We responded on some minor calls, nothing too major. A call for harassment, a truck that hit a fence when it rolled after it popped out of gear, there were a couple warrant checks on people, and we looked for a car that flew by us. We found it parked next to a house. The guy lied about the car. He said it didn't run, but it was warm. Then he said it runs, but he doesn't drive it because the tabs are expired.

After riding with Chris, I drove South near Spanaway to see an old roommate. I had not seen him for about ten years. It had been a long time. We had been roommates at one time while I was staying in Pullman for the summer when I was first staying in Pullman for the summer. He is a mo. He always was interested in me, but I wasn't so interested in him because back then I was not a big fan of being gay. Not that a lot has changed, but I am a little more comfortable. But I still have issue with being with another gay guy. I would love to find someone who I would love to be with, but I have yet to find that guy.

Boys at Girls Night

This morning I was a little on the tired side. I was up late with Blake and Young. We had a good time, but now I had to be at resume and cover letter training. It was just like the class for filling out the application. It is set up for someone who hasn't really finished college. It is for the person who may or may not even have a GED. I showed my resume when it came time for us to write resumes. After looking at it, I was asked a couple questions, then I was excused for the class.

When I got home I was looking at posts on Facebook I saw one from Casi. She said she something about girls night. I joked about bring me along. She said tonight they are going to Wehrungs at six o'clock. She said I should come along. I wasn't for sure I should just show up to Wehrungs place, so I texted him.

I realized the funeral for Officer Brenton might be played live on TV. So I checked NWCN and sure enough they had it. I sat down and watched the funeral. Seeing the people who came and showed support was great.

When the funeral was over, some two and a half hours later I turned off the TV for a few minutes. When I turned it back on they were showing an aerial view of some people on the ground near a police car. They had a heading showing there was a shooting. At first I was thinking that it could have been a cop shot. They showed about fourteen cops cars filling up a nearby street. More and more were coming. I started to think that maybe this had something to do with the guy who killed Officer Brenton. As the coverage continued more cops were showing up. Cops from at least eight different agencies were all showing up in Tukwila. I continued to watch the coverage as the time went by more information was coming out. Sure enough they were getting the cop killer. He pulled a gun on the cops and got shot. He was down, but taken to the hospital.

What a turn of events. To spend two and a half hours watching the funeral and learning about the life of the officer killed, to almost right away watching the cops arrest the guy responsible.

I got a text back from Chris about his party. I headed over to his house around six o'clock. I was the first there. But soon everyone else started to show up. We spent a lot of time chatting and laughing about various subjects as we mingled. The guys usually grouped up and the girls usually grouped up. Then we would co-mingle. It was a good time. They were fondue party. It ended with chocolate fondue.

While I was there I got a call about a job I had sent in my resume for. It would be a six to eight week contract to do web work. I got a little background on the job and I was asked some questions about my experience and availability. I was told I would get a call in the next couple days to let me know one way or another about this job.

As the night was coming to an end we were talking some politics-like stuff in reference to department and fire services in general. It was interesting to talk about how some other fire departments do things.

Then I was asked a question about how I feel I am treated being a gay in the fire department. I said since I have been outed to everyone I don't feel that I have ever been treated poorly due to being gay. Chris let me know that he has known for years. He said that pretty much everyone on the fire department on the career side knows. He said there are probably only a couple people who don't really know. He said that they probably have been told, but think that people are screwing with them. It is without a doubt that the information is told to everyone. I am not sure who actually tells the others but the information is freely available. But once again no one treats me differently.

Chris said when I lost all the weight I gained a lot of respect from a lot of people on the department.

Silly Faggot

I spent much of the morning watching football. I watched Farve go to Green Bay. He is my starting QB for FFL. My team was doing okay, but this week, like every week this season I have been matched up against the team that scored a lot of points. There are eight teams that scored less than me. There are three that have higher scores. I am paired against one of the three. This is a bad season for me.

Tonight is weekly rig checks for A-shift. I went to the station around six o'clock to do rig checks. It only took us about an hour and a half to get everything done. I went home and watched some TV. My normal Sunday night shows were not on tonight so I had to choose to watch something else.

I got a response to the message I sent yesterday about being called a faggot. The response said that he didn't know that I was there, that he didn't remember making any mention of me, and that no one there knew me, so why would he reference me.

I responded back with a better run down of what happened and pointed out that he was talking to someone who did know me. I also pointed out that I was close enough to hear the whole thing very clearly. There was no doubt about what I heard.

I asked him straight up if he thought that way about me. He didn't answer that in his response back to me. All he said was "I can't take back what I said. It was obviously stupid and incredibly disrespectful. All I can do is apologize."

So, he didn't deny thinking that I am a faggot. I think that the only thing he is sorry about is that I heard him, and he may not even be sorry for that.

Good Start, Bad Ending

Today is Halloween and I am looking forward to having a good time. I am going to one party and then I will probably go to a second one with a guy I work with, finally I am going to hopefully go to a bar.

Last night the fire department was very busy running from call to call. I listened to a lot of it last night, and I was up this morning. It was a nice day. It is a Saturday. I was thinking about going to Moscow Fire for a pancake feed, but it was late enough in the morning and with the Vandal Homecoming parade gearing up I didn't want to get stuck in tons of traffic.

Chia called me and we talked for a little while. I am happy he called me. I was getting concerned that he was mad at me for some reason. In the early afternoon I went to the store to get some M&Ms for the party tonight. They were packed so I figured the guys would be busy tonight.

As it was getting close to time to go to Mike's place for the beer tasting Halloween party, I got a call from BKoe. Some of the guys were at My Office. I came down and had some water with them. CBass and Kuhrt were there as well.

I left as it was getting close to six. I went home and got my costume put on. I go to Mike's and Heidi was there. Kuhrt showed up later. I got some food and gave them my M&Ms. I sat at the table and everyone was talking and we were also watching the Cougs play Notre Dame. The Cougs lost.

I was there until around nine o'clock. Then I drove to Dan's house. I did some trick or treating there. I looked around at Dan's set up and we talked for about half an hour.

I texted Togs and then went over to meet up with him. We talked by the road for a while and got a couple photos. I went into the backyard of the house party when I overheard a guy calling me a faggot. Sort of caught me off guard. He knows I am gay, but I would not have thought that you felt that way about me.

This is why I hate it when I know that people know. Because I think about what they think about me. When I don't know, then I don't have those thoughts and I don't get preoccupied. It is just so much easier to be in the dark.

So, after that I just wanted to leave. I wanted to confront him a little bit as well, but with him having been drinking and being at the party, I didn't want to get into it. The wind had been taken out of my sails for the night. I decided not to hit the bar and just drove home.

Overheard at a Party

This is a letter that I wrote to someone who I use to work with...

[Censored] had invited me to his place tonight to hang out for a while on Halloween. When I was ready to come over he had gone to your place up the hill. Him and I chatting outside on the street for a while. Then he went inside and to the back yard. I made my way there too. I was standing near the back door for a while. Then I started to make way over to the fire.

As I was walking up there I saw [censored], he was chatting with a girl and you. Some sort of joke was being made and the word faggot was being used pretty liberally. I was not offended by that at all. That didn't even bother me.

But what I heard you say heavily disappointed me. Enough so that I decided not to say hello to you and I chose to leave and go home.

In reference to the word faggot you said "Just like the A-shift crew leader". I am not sure if you go around outing me to people, but that is purely disrespectful, that is not your place to do that.

But for me what was so disappointing is that I thought there was some level of respect, even if only on a professional level. Clearly it appears there is no respect at all.

If he had known I was there and was making the joke to mess with me, I would have been fine with it. I was not upset about the word faggot being thrown around in a general way.

But what disappointed me is that I was being degraded in a specific way. The person doing it had no idea I was standing right there, due to the fact it is Halloween and I was in a full costume. I am happy to know what he really thinks, because at least I know where I stand with him. I hate being around people who are fake.

Anyway, I wasn't quite sure if I should confront him on the spot or just walk away. I figured in the party setting and with the alcohol being used I should deal with it later. Plus, I don't know if the person who I was meeting up with knows about me or not, but if I had confronted him right there he would have known for sure.

An Day of Movies

Watching TV all day long during recovery can get old, but I kept looking for movies I had not seen. There was one that had started about ten minutes before I turned it on. The movie is called Backdraft. I know, don't say it, how can a fireman take seventeen years to watch that movie? But I don't know. I never got around to it. Finally it was on cable and I was going to see it uncut and unedited.

Of course being Hollywood there were some inaccuracies with how we really do things, but at the same time the message of the movie was pretty strong. I really had no idea what the movie was about. I didn't know it was about a couple brothers who are firemen and they are dealing with an arsonist. I am happy that I watched it. It actually had some pretty powerful scenes.

Ryan and I chatted online about Ref Seventy-One. He is posting a couple articles online. One was supposed to be unbiased. He asked me to read it to see if I thought it was free of any slants. He said he was going to write one that will show his support of gay civil unions. I told him he was a hater of all gays. I told him that it was not nice to support that. Right now the guys can tell their boyfriend "you know I would love to marry you, but we can't". Really he doesn't want to get married, but he has the law to fall back on to be able to pretend that he wants to get married. With R-Seventy-One, now he will not have that protection. Now gays will all get as miserable as married couples. What a big jerk. He was laughing.

I watched a second movie at the end of the night that was based on a true story. It was called Bully. It is about a high school guy who abuses his best friend making him do homosexual acts. he also was raping some women. One girl wanted to kill the bully. Then others got in on it. Finally they lured him to a rock pit. One guy stabbed him. Then his best friend slashed him and stabbed him multiple times. Other guys helped out beating him, stabbing him, and finally one guy bashed in his head with a bat. They threw his body in a pond. It wasn't long before they were discovered and all arrested. Several are serving life sentences in jail. The movie took the side of the killers. They did make the guy out to be bad and almost deserving of death. The movie itself was very graphic with its sex scenes. It seemed like half of the movie was spent surrounded with sexual images including the guys in the movie being shirtless all the time.

Coming out to Trailbuddy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Working the Palouse Fair

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are We Born That Way?

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

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

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

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

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

How do you Say Taco in Spanish?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First Show in Years

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Going Out with a Structure Fire

As I was waking up this morning I wasn't sure how my final couple hours would end. I was thinking that I should have ended the night of the Staley fire so I could end on a fire. Before seven o'clock rolled around the tones go off for a structure fire. We could see the smoke from the station.

We got on scene in the ambulance and were made into the backup team. We went to the attic where the seat of the fire was. Eric, who was on his first day back, was on the nozzle and put the fire out. It was still pretty small, but growing. It was lucky that we got there when we did and that the fire was not in the wee hours of the morning when it could have really taken off. I ended up putting in an hour and a half of overtime. So my full-time tally was one year, one month, four days and one and a half hours. It has been a good run.

I got back to the station and got the last remaining items from the station cleared out and headed to Tam's Place for breakfast with Chia, Keeton, Young, and Pritchett. I left after I was done eating so I could get a couple things done before meeting up with the guys to go to the river. I dropped off my turn outs at the station and went home. I got a couple things taken care of at home and packed my stuff to go to the river.

I went to Pritchett's place. We were meeting up there. From there Keeton, Pritchett, and I rode together to the river. We got there and made our way to the beach. It is a long haul from the parking lot. I didn't know how long it was because I had never gone there without being on a boat.

We set up our area. I put on some suntan lotion and we went into the water. We played fetch with Chia's and Pritchett's dogs. We were there for hours watching as more and more people showed up. As the college students started to arrive the scenery was great. You couldn't look somewhere without finding a couple ten-six-sevens. I really enjoyed the scenery while playing with the dogs.

Brown showed up with his boat. We hung out for a while near his boat and then went for some tubing. I hit the water and the rope on the tube was really long, so I was getting whipped around pretty good. I had a couple good wrecks along the way. Including one where I went about twenty feet sliding on the water before rolling.

It was getting close to five so we started to pack up and make our way back home. It was a good afternoon on the water.

I got cleaned up. I waited from BKoe to show up but as seven o'clock was rolling around he was no where to be found. I texted him and he was in Moscow. He forgot he was going to give me a ride to the bar. So I called Pritchett and he gave me a ride down to the bar.

We got there just after seven o'clock. Guys filtered in over the next two hours. It was a going away party for me from the career ranks. It was very nice to see some of these people stop by and wish me well and let me know they enjoyed working with me.

I had a couple guys over the last few months let me know that at first they were not sure what to think about me coming on at first. But they said that I have been a great addition. They really have enjoyed working with me and think that I am a pretty darn good guy.

One guy and I talked for a while about stuff. I remember when we would go on calls together I didn't know what to think. We talked and all was good. But when we were on shift together at first I think there was the feeling that we didn't know each other. And as time went on he warmed up to me and got to know me and the same of me towards him. I really think he a good person and I really enjoy talking with him.

As the night rolled on I got some beer purchased for me and we sat around talking, playing pool and darts. When it was nearly eleven o'clock we made our way to TBag. Pritchett was already there. I was given a couple shots of hard-A. I wasn't really wanting to have them, but I cowboyed up and drank them. We played pool and sat around talking.

Then one guy came up and said the words that I know will lead us to a specific conversation. It was, something along the lines of "It doesn't matter to me, you're a good guy, so it really will not make a difference, but..." That is the start of someone wanting to know if I am gay.

With the guy who was asking, I wasn't sure if he knew or not. But he has been around for a long time so I had to assume that he had heard through the grapevine. He said he had heard some stuff, but he didn't believe it until he heard for himself. I told him that I hit for the other team. I told him that I don't really tell people because I don't want them to act differently around me. I told him I like the fact that when I have been around him for all this time he wasn't afraid to say things and not worry about offending me. I told him I wanted him to remain feeling that way. He is one of those guys who always says "That is gay" or things like that. He said he sort of knew that something was probably up because I am not interested in the hot girls as everyone else is. He could tell so he figured something was up. I am glad that he asked and now I know that he knows.

I had asked Chia a while back if others on the shift knew. He said he didn't know. He said that no one would care. I believe that is true, but I wanted to know. I would like to think they all knew and still were the way they were around me. Which would show they are comfortable with me. I just feel like if I walk into a room and people feel like they have to watch what they say, that it would be a strain to be around me and they would just choose not to be around me. I don't want that. I really don't care what people say, because I believe you have to choose to be offended. I choose not to be offended by that kind of stuff.

The other Blake came up to me and started to say the same thing. I thought it would all be coming out that night. But before I confirmed anything I had to know exactly what he was asking. As it turned out with him he was talking about something totally different. So I don't know if he knows. I guess thinking about it now, I am not sure if I just want to come out to those guys and that way I know that they know and I can just get on with things, or continue to play the game I have been playing. I am not sure if I want the reserves to know. I know that some do know, but I always hate it when the new reserves find out about me because it is always something that someone else brings up. Over the years I have had a couple guys ask me straight up. I always will confirm it if they ask. I like it when they ask, because if they are willing to ask they will typically not make a big deal about it at all.

More Blog Readers

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

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

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

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

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

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

No Time to Eat

At the fire department today I bought everyone breakfast. We first went to look at a couple parking structures. Then we came back and started breakfast. Before we got far into it, we got toned out to a call.

When we got back breakfast had been made and was starting to cool down. But it was still good. After breakfast I sat in a recliner with the other guys and watched the end of a show that we started to watch while eating. This is the first time I have sat in a recliner. I was waiting until I put in a year. My one year anniversary was on the fourteenth.

We went out and worked on the ambulances for the weekly checks. Once done some guys took a nap. I stayed up.

For dinner we were having burgers and tater tots. I got three bites into it and we were sent on a call. I got back to a cooled down burger. But that happens.

After dinner we cleaned up and watched some TV. The plan was to watch COPS and have some ice cream. I just finished my ice cream when we got toned to another call. It seemed like every time I had something I wanted to do I got called away.

I also spent time talking with James a mo from Moscow. He and I spent time talking online for quite a while. Then he called me and we chatted on the phone for a little bit. He is a nice guy, but he was hard to understand on the phone.

I was getting tired after watching the Red Green Show and went to bed.

Undefeated in Softball Day One

The plan for today was to have some fun playing softball. I was hurting for men, which is unusual. I am normally trying to find extra women. But today I had to get the men. We had one pick up that Jessie got and Joe played with us too.

In the games I was hitting the ball very well. I had two inside-the-park-homeruns plus some other strong hits through out the day.

I also helped with the score keeping, but as I was doing that someone went down on the next field over, and I was asked to come over an help. There were already two EMT's there. That is the second time the fire department had to get called to the field today.

It was a nice afternoon at the park. In the first game we were playing we won it pretty easily. The second game was not so easy. We had brought in Kelly, but we lost an outfielder so we were playing with only nine players. That really hurt. But we were scoring runs and we went on to win the game.

In the end we won both games. After the game Sheila and I went to Cougar Country for some dinner. We sat there talking for a while. I have a hard time around her. I am very nervous. I feel bad because as much as I would like to get be a straight guy and lead a straight life, I kept on checking out the guys that would walk by. I guess at some point I need to tell her, but I guess that would be before we get to the point where it would be clear she is interested in me.

When I Know That They Know

After leaving the fire department this morning I decided that I would be on pager. But so far there has only been one call and it is one that the guys on pager don't respond to.

I washed my rig this afternoon. I got the weedeating completed. I also got my garage swept out and the driveway washed off. It was a productive day and it felt good to get those things completed.

This evening I was doing some ego-surfing. I think that is the term for it. It is where you search yourself out on the web. I was looking for references to me out there. Then I wanted to see if there were any references to me and being gay. I didn't find any of myself, but I did find one where a guy named Scotty was killed, and it is thought his sexuality was partly to blame for it. I started to go down that path.

Then I decided to look up gay athletes. On outsports.com they had a listing of gay athletes. I was reading about some of them. They had two stories that took place about ten years ago. In one case a co-captain of a high school football team was outed and his life was made a living hell. He dropped out of school. The other story was about a high school football player who was accepted and life was good.

I started to read about a college-level football captain who also was outed. Things went well for him. There were many other stories I was reading about athletes who have had their share of success and failure after being outed to their team.

The gay college football player said one of his biggest concerns was that he felt the others guys might be uncomfortable in the locker room around him because they know he is gay.

It is funny, I am the same way. When no one knows you're gay you can blend in and no one is uncomfortable around you. But for me when I know that someone else knows that I am gay, that makes me uncomfortable around them. I think about what they might be thinking about me.

Every time something happens, I wonder if they think I did it because I was gay. I have found most guys don't think about it most of the time. Many times they don't remember that I am gay at every moment of the day. But living the life of a gay man it is always something that is on your mind. It is sort of like living in a fishbowl. I always think that my actions are being judged by the others due to my homosexuality.

The funny thing is that even those who are "okay" with me don't fully understand homosexuality. They think it is a choice. They think that it is cool as long as I don't hit on them.

Interesting Turn of Events

This morning i got up and I left pretty well rested. I made some bacon for breakfast and hung out outside of my camper. They were playing a game that the players toss two golf balls that are attached to a string. They wrap around one of three bars. They get points based on what bar it is wrapped around. Each team has three of the ball sets. Someone accidentally got one stuck in a tree. We spent some time trying to hit it was a basketball to get it out of the tree. We came close, but the one hit of the basketball got it higher in the tree. We worked on it longer and finally got it out of the tree when someone climbed up the tree. We took some group photos and then I got my campsite cleaned up and left.

On the way home I stopped at two properties that are for sale. One seemed to have someone at it, so I didn't stop. The other one I stopped and walked around the house and looked inside. They also had a big shop that I looked around. The shop needs a lot of work to clean up due to the birds that have been in it. The house is nice, but it is pretty far out there. I am not sure I would want to be so far from Pullman.

Brandon, Kevin, and I were playing some games this afternoon and we decided we would put together a poker game in the evening. Peter was going to play as well. I called the Peter from my softball team and he was going to come over and play.

I had a softball game. In my first at bat I had an inside-the-park-homerun. Heston was on first base. I was trying to catch up to him so I was running very hard. I ended up hurting my back in the process. That pretty much sucked. I also had a triple on the night.

During the game I noticed the third baseman for the other team. Then I heard someone say her name. I thought I recognized her and her name. I had been in an e-mail conversation with her for a length of time. I started to worry that the idea of me getting a girlfriend might cause a lot of pain if I wasn't able to keep my eyes of the guys. So it was interesting to see her in real life. As we were congratulating each other she high-fived me but also grabbed my hand. I am not sure if she did that to everyone, or if she recognized me. I think she recognized me.

We won the game and I was on my way home to play some poker. We stayed up until nearly two in the morning playing cards. I played on my one five dollar buy-in for the night. I was up a fair amount of money for the night. I was one of the three winners of the night. It was a good day over all.

A Night With Gunnar

Today was day two of the softball tournament. We played on game and were sent packing. We didn't really hit the ball well and several of the players we had didn't came back the second day for various reasons. It was this tournament that made me decide not to spearhead any more tournaments. It was took much work to call people over and over to find people to play. I am then questioned why we had so many people in one game. I am getting annoyed that every step along the way I am being questioned. First the question is about me not winning the toss and getting Home team. So I win the toss and get home team only to be told we should take Away from now on. Argh!

Later we had co-ed. There were five women and seven guys. So I just did the managing and let the others play. After the game I stopped by Starbucks and picked up Gunnar. We got some pizza and then went to my place. We watched the Italian Job and then watched some TV. We were together until nearly two in the morning hanging out and watching TV. We saw a lot of shows on Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network that were very strange.

It was fun to hang out with Gunnar again. But I am starting to wonder already if we are right together. I am going to give it some time. I think communication is important. We talked in some E-mails about that. I think it is important that if something is bothering me that I say what it is rather than letting it boil over at some point in the future.

I keep thinking I want a boyfriend, but then when I have someone I wonder if he is right for me. I don't know if I have dysfunctional issues of having the boyfriend or if the situation is that I just haven't found the right guy yet. I just don't know. At times I like the ability to have someone to call "mine", but then other parts of me feel like it is all wrong. I don't know if that is the part of me that doesn't like being gay and that I want to not be gay so it ruins any chances of a relationship. I sometimes look around thinking that "if that guy was my boyfriend I would be happy".

My New Durango

After I got off work I went to Lewiston to pick up my new Durango. I worked on getting the things transferred over to it. It has leather in all three rows. That was nice to see, because I only negotiated the first two rows. It must have cost less to do all three than they thought it was going to cost to do the first two rows.

I have lifetime powertrain and bumper-to-bumper warranties. It has a DVD player built into the radio. I have a rearview camera and backup sensors. It has the Hemi with MDS so it shuts down some of the cylinders when they are not needed to help save fuel. It seems to have some get-up and go. It feel great to drive it. Plus it has the newer traction control system so I feel better about driving it on the bad roadways.

When comparing my Ought-Seven vs Ought-Four it was night and day. My rig has traction like the Ought-Seven. The Ought-Seven was one I would try to put sideways on the snow covered roads and soon as it started to move sideways it would straighten out. I was easily about to put the Ought-Four sideways. I didn't like that in terms of safety.

It looks very nice. I also have the navigation system installed. I have a huge hard drive so I can input songs and play straight from my hard drive. It also have satellite radio. I have enough space to put all my music on the hard drive.

I decided that I would find an application to update the ID3 information on all the songs. Then I am going to go through and clean the directory. I am going to work on properly naming all the songs and fixing the errors in naming of the songs. I am going to get rid of all the duplicate songs as well. I expect this project to take many hours.

After getting the rig I went to Costco to get some groceries. I hadn't been to Costco in a long time. But I was able to get several things that I needed including paper plates, a push broom, and a sixteen gig thumb drive. I spent nearly four-hundred bucks in all.

Nathan came over and we watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith. We were not able to watch the whole thing because he had to go to a meeting, but we were going to get together after his meeting.

My softball games that were planned for the afternoon were cancelled so I didn't have to worry about those.

A call came in for a transfer to Spokane. I decided to take the call. I went to Spokane with Blake. It was an ALS transfer. Following that call I went home to continue to working on my music. I ended up staying up until nearly two in the morning.

Five Hour Airport Transfer

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

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

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

Mom's Sixty-Seventh Birthday

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mike Knows My Mo Friend

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Gay Day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Final Day of Academy Classroom

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

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

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

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

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

Gun Not So Clean

At the class this evening all guns were checked for being clean. I had cleaned my gun, but it was still a little dirty and it was discovered. I was made to do twenty-five push ups. That sucked. I was mad that it was dirty. The class got out a little early today. We talked about suicide and para-suicide. Then we went over the test.

Today was Peter's birthday. It always brings me up to a dilemma. I have a situation that has been going on for years. I am too much of a wuss to actually ask Peter point-blank what happened.

I met Peter when he was a freshman at WSU. We became friends then best friends. We were always together. Going to football games, playing basketball, watching TV, playing on the computer, talking politics, and even doing the radio show together. I actually came out to him towards the end of the school year. That was tough because he was a Southern Baptist and very conservative. But he said he didn't care and had actually figured out I was gay long before I told him. He said "you don't become as good of friends as we are without figuring out that kind of stuff."

The following school year things started out okay, but then one day he stopped calling, responding to e-mails and voice mails. He just stopped communicating with me. Once in a blue moon I would get a hold of him, but he would blow me off. That went on for a long time. I didn't know what was going on and I was very sad about it.

To this day I still don't know what happened. Why he did that to me. Since that time we have hung out more after he moved to Bellevue. It is sort of like it never happened, but I still am very self conscious about it when I am around him. I have a hard time looking him in the eye. I need to know why he did it. During his twenty-one run several years ago he invited me out on it. After the end of the night he was very drunk and he said that he was sorry for being such an "asshole" to me. I wanted to ask him more at that time, but I never did.

I wished him a happy birthday and he said that when I am in town next time we need to hang out. He said it has been too long since we last hung out. I want to get with him, but I have to get the courage to ask him what happened. Why he just stopped being my friend and dropped me like a dirty whore.

A Review of Ought-Eight

Jan - Body for Life - While I was researching that [number of calories in a Big Mac] I hit upon (I should say hit BACK upon) the Body for Life site. I am going to give their twelve week program a try that combines weight training, cardio, and nutrition into a program that lasts twelve week. That is eighty-four days.

Feb - NU Sold to MH - Today was the day I was going to get fired from NU. But it was one where I was told I would be fired. It was more of a formality than anything. They had to "terminate" everyone to close out the books. Then start the new company. I was hired back on.

Mar - Truck Traded for a Durango - I test drove two of the Durangos. One was a Ought-Seven and one was an Ought-Three. I like the color and seats of the Ought-Three. Plus the cab reminded my of the look and feel of the old Dakota. But the Ought-Seven was nicer over all, had many less miles and some other things I just couldn't pass up. Plus it wasn't a ton more than the older Durango.

Apr - Last Radio Show... Ever - This last semester or two the show has suffered from my lack of time preparing for the topics, getting guests, and whatnot. I don't have the fire in my gut like I did. I just don't have things to talk about like I did at one time. ... I decided it was time to pull the plug on the show.

May - Multiple Softball Tournaments - Brandon came to the camp site and I got to see him for the first time a while. He got his uniform from Kelly and went to put it on. The team went to do some warm up hitting. I didn't do so hot there. Brandon was crushing the ball as normal for him.

Jun - Snow and Fire in June - I opened the door and saw snow. I thought to myself "Am I more shocked over the fire or the snow?". Then I looked up and saw heavy brown smoke coming from the south-east area behind my house. On the way to the station the guys leaving Station Two quickly called or a second alarm. I drove by the scene and saw the whole front of the building involved in fire.

Jul - Pullman Fire Temp Full-Time - I went to Heston's office and said I that I am going to take it. He shook my hand and we scheduled my first day to be Monday of next week. I am going to only have three more shifts as a reserve. I am sad about that. I am going to miss working with those guys. I am now in a little bit of a haze as this is a big event in my life and I have a lot to think about now.

Aug - Playing in Nationals for Softball - We didn't score enough runs and lost the game ending our hopes at the Western ASA D-league Nationals. It was fun to be here and I have my t-shirt to show for it.

Sep - Passed my Physical Test for Sheriff's Reserves - I crossed the finish line in thirteen minutes and fifty-eight seconds. That was so huge. I passed the test. It felt great. I finally did it. We had some rest, then we had to run a sprint. That was seventy-one seconds for three-hundred and thirty yards. I knew I could do that without a problem.

Oct - I am a Sheriff's Reserve - The first day of class I got a chance to meet up with some of the other students. We had the Sheriff tell us about ethics and what he expects from us. It was mainly a day of introductions and laying some of the groundwork of the academy. I am excited for the academy to get over with so I don't have to worry about getting days off from work and then I can go out on the road and work on becoming First-Class solo patrol.

Nov - Met a Man - When the game was done I met up with Gunnar. We have been e-mailing back and forth the last two days and decided that we wanted to watch the movie Scream. So he called me up. We met at Starbucks. We sat there talking for a while. He is working on a project and he told me a little about what he is doing.

Dec - Treating Myself Well - I don't usually splurge in the way I did over the last week. I have spent thousands of dollars on a new Tempurpeadic Rhapsody bed, a fifty-eight inch plasma TV, a new TV stand, and a new Sprint Touch Pro cell phone.

Looking back over the year some months I had a hard time picking out one thing because several things could have been listed as big events for me. But if I had to pick out three major things from the year I would say being a Pullman Fire Temp, a Sheriff's Reserve, and making it to Nationals in Softball were the real big events.

My Boyfriend

I got the final items completed on my work for NU. They have all been checked in and I am now going to start the testing process. I got some plowing done around the house.

Gunnar and I were going to get together. We went to Moscow. I went to a couple stores. I bought a couple pair of cargo pants. I tried them on and got his input. It was pretty relationship-like feeling. I also got some belts.

We went to get some pizza and then back to my place to watch a movie. We choose The Count of Monte Cristo. I also told him what ten-six-seven means as well as wondering if someone owns a weedeater or not.

We sat on the couch together watching the movie. When it was over with we cuddled some more. During that time he asked me if I would be his boyfriend. I said I would. So I now have a boyfriend.

Date Number Two

This evening found Gunnar and I going to dinner at The Emerald. After dinner I got some food for BKoe and then went to my place. Gunnar and I were going to watch the new Batman movie. He got a chance to see my new TV. He was very impressed.

After the movie we were watching some stuff on TV. I was on the loveseat and he was on the couch. BKoe also watched the movie with us.

Later he went upstairs and Gunnar invited me to sit on the couch with him. He laid up against me and we held on to each other as we watched TV. At some point BKoe came down stairs. I felt sort of weird having him walk past us, but I didn't make eye contact nor say anything. I don't want him to feel uncomfortable.

My First Date with Gunnar

I went to the Dodge dealership to talk with them about the Chrysler Aspen they have for sale. I got a pretty good over all price on it. The problem is I was not happy with some of the things it didn't have, such as the upgraded sound system and the center counsel that is not as spacious as the Durango. I turned down the deal after some negotiations. I got some calls through out the afternoon dealing with this vehicle. The final one was me saying they would have to come down five to seven thousand more for me to consider it as it would be me "settling". I am not ready to do that.

I went to Moscow to pay for my bed and TV set. I am excited to have it delivered. It will be at my place on Monday. I am excited to see what it is like to leap on one of those beds. I will have to writ about it in one month when I have it and me broken into it.

At six-thirty Gunnar and I were going to go out on our first official date. We hung out on last Saturday and again for coffee on Monday. But we have not done anything official yet.

I went to his place to pick him up. I was trying to decide if I was going to get out and open his door or not. I decided to not do so. I am not sure of that was good or bad. But he got in and we headed down to Pete's. He was dressed in some slacks a tee-shirt and a button-up with the buttons not done. He was looking good.

I was wearing slacks and a collared polo-type shirt. I was looking reasonable as well. Or so I say. Anyway, we went to Pete's and had dinner and conversation. We talked a little about jails and religion and their crossing point. We also hit on some other subjects that he brought up. We both ordered nachos.

After dinner was over we went to Zeppoz's. We were going to do some bowling. There was a bit of a backlog. So we played some video games and I watched him do some Dance Dance Revolution. He is pretty good at it. I went to check on the lane availability. Turns out there were many lanes open but we were never called for it.

Anyway, we started to bowl. He was struggling. On the other hand I was doing pretty well for myself. He finally got a strike and i gave him a high-five. In the second game I bowled left handed. I lost to him by five pins. I bowled a one-oh-nine left handed.

After bowling we went to Dairy Queen for dessert. We both got an ice cream cone. I drove him home and he was saying goodbye. He put his hand out towards me palm up. Indicating he wanted to hold hands. I took his hand. We held hands in my vehicle talking about all sorts of things for about fifteen to twenty minutes. He talked about how happy he was to have found me. He was excited about the possibilities for the future. He didn't want to let go. Later on that night he sent me an e-mail saying that if I didn't want to have let go, he would have gladly gone home with me.

It felt so good to hold hands and have the physical contact. I am making sure that we are taking things slowly. There is no reason to hurry into a physical relationship if we want something more out of it. If we want a one-night stand type of relationship it would already be over with.

I am not sure what it will be like in the future if our relationship blossoms into something of a boyfriend relationship, then he will come with me on events I am sure. I am sure people will talk, because first off it would be a might Mo of a relationship. The other thing is that he is twenty-one. I am sure people will look at me as a cradle robber. I am just happy to have someone who loves to be around me and I hope that something positive comes of the whole thing.

Coffee with the Man

I was working hard on the new spec that I have for NU. It is an update to the LP program that we have. It is a lot faster going than it use to be since my computers have been put into the colo. But now it is just getting up to speed on some of this stuff. I am running into road bumps off and on.

This evening Gunnar and I met up and went to the Daily Grind to get some coffee and spend time talking. We were there for about an hour and a half. We talked about a wide range of subjects.

When I dropped him off at his apartment I asked him out on a date. We are going to go out this Friday. I am excited about it!

Met a New Man

The plan for the day was pretty simple, go to the Colfax football game and meet Gunnar. The first part went well as did the second part.

I heard the ambulance leave Colfax on their way to the game. So I talked to one of the guys on the Ambulance and then headed to Martin Stadium to watch the game. It was a semi-final game between Colfax and Asotin. Early in the game a player of Colfax got hurt. I ended up transporting him to the hospital. In the end Asotin was too big and over powered Colfax. They lost.

When the game was done I met up with Gunnar. We have been e-mailing back and forth the last two days and decided that we wanted to watch the movie Scream. So he called me up. We met at Starbucks. We sat there talking for a while. He is working on a project and he told me a little about what he is doing.

Then we went to Blockbuster. I bought a couple movies but we didn't find Scream. We went to Video Quest and found it. We rented it and went to my place to watch it. Following the movie we sat around and talked as the TV was on in the background. In all we talked until nearly two o'clock in the morning.

We talked about a lot of different subject. It was very easy to talk to him. He is twenty-one years old and going to WSU and is planning on going into law. We have that in common. Well more so that I wanted to go into law. We talked about our homosexuality, but that was not a huge part of the night, it was just a small part.

When it was time for me hit the hay, I gave him a ride home. He was impressed that I was real and was true to my word about who I was and the way I acted.

Outside the Park Homerun

Today was pretty busy for the most part. I got up and went to station one for the reserve testing. I got to drive the PL to the tower and back. I helped to set up everything. I also was an evaluator. I followed about seven of the people through their testing to keep time and make sure they did everything they were supposed to during the test. We were done after about five hours.

I was invited to My Office by two of the other career guys. We had some lunch and a couple pitchers of beer. We talked about a various number of things. One of the subjects that came up was about me. One guy has known since he was a reserve with me years ago. The other guy was a newer fire medic. I didn't know he knew. But when I made a cryptic reference to the guy who knew, the other one acknowledged that he did know about me.

I asked how he knew. He said he over heard something about six months ago. He said it didn't surprise him, but he didn't care either. He has been a very nice guy to work with and I have always gotten along with him. I asked why he wasn't surprised. He said it is because I am such a nice guy.

Following the time at the bar I went to my house to get into my softball uniform and went to the Valley Road Playfields for the games. I ended up pitching both games and did just fine while pitching. I had one ball hit back right at me in the second game and it hit my right on my cup. Good thing I had one.

Hitting was good for me. I had an over-the-fence homerun in the first game. It was the difference in the game. It was a two run shot. I took a pitch that was inside and up. I swung away and it just flew. I knew there was a good chance that it would go out when I hit it.

We lost the second game because no one could hit and all of our defensive players made an error. It was sucky.

Ryan and I got some dinner from Cougar Country and went back to my house to watch the Simpsons and Family Guy. After Ryan left I worked on my Town Crier column.

The Boys are Back

This morning I went to my appointment for the psychological analysis that I need to get have for the reserve deputy position at the Sheriff's Office. That appointment took nearly two hours doing all sorts of various tests.

When the tests were done I went home and got some stuff taken care of there before Bien was going to get into town. Heston called me and said he was planning on going to My Office an hour earlier than the scheduled time in order to have some dinner and meet up with Bien. I went down even earlier in order to save a table. It took a while for people to show up.

Heston and a girl who he knows from softball were there. We sat around watching some baseball and talking about things. We were waiting for the others to start to show up. Dearth was coming as well as Bien and Tyson. We also had Parrish, Williams, A. Wilcox, Yean, and Togiai all were going to come down. As people arrived we greeted each other and started to share drinks and conversation.

We also started to get photos of the different groups of reserves. After a while when A. Wilcox wasn't there Parrish called and reminded him about it. He came down and we got a photo with him in it as well.

The Spring class

The Spring and Fall class

It wasn't long after he got there that we headed up to campus to go to the bars up there. Dearth and Tyson headed to Dearth's old frat. A. Wilcox, Bien, the girls, and I walked down to Mike's.

On the way I asked A. Wilcox if we were good. He said we are. He was relieved that I asked that. He felt we were good the whole time but he didn't talk to me because he thought I wasn't good with everything. He said he felt bad because the other day I was working at the station and we were sitting next to each other on the computer and he wanted to chat with me but he thought it would make me uncomfortable.

He said that he really respects my moral values and my work knowledge. He said he has learned a lot from me. He said he always would look for me when we were doing some sort of training at the station to say hi to me in the past. He didn't want that to end. I still cannot look him in the eyes. But we talked for a while and holds no hard feelings at all.

He knew some of the bouncers and got us downstairs without having to stand in line. Bien got something to drink. We talked and hung out. I told Bien that I wanted to tell him how sorry I was over something that had happened. He didn't even remember it, but I told him that it was probably the worst I felt I have ever done as a crew leader. I felt I had been out of line. I told him I thought that since that happened we were not as close as we had been. I also told him I had great respect for him and that he was always my right-hand man on the shift. It was good to get that off my chest and that I needed to let him know how bad I felt.

Bien started to get out on the dance floor and he was dancing with some of the girls down there. We stayed at the bar until closing time. Then we walked back to my house from Mike's. He stayed the night and we went to bed around three o'clock in the morning.

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.

Three for Three

I went into the fire station to participate in the new station committee. Following that I was waiting a while to speak with Chief Brown. As it was getting close to noon I decided to go home and get lunch. Just as lunch was getting done I heard them call for someone to do a transfer to Palouse. I called in for that.

We got to the hospital and found out we were delayed one hour. I worked on some stuff for my CPR class that I am teaching tomorrow to my shift. We did the transfer. I was in the back of the ambulance. When it was all said and done the whole thing took more than four hours. Chuck did the transfer with me and we talked some politics. We talked about being gay and it being out at the fire department. I think most of the guys at PFD know. I don't tell people, but I think others make it know. For the most part I think the newer reserves are in the dark about it. Or at least most of there were in the dark about it.

I went to a softball game in the evening. I was the EH. I hit the ball well. I went three for three. One of them bounced badly and I was running hard. I got to third, but I had to slide. We won the game and I went to the fire department for training.

I was hoping to talk with the guy that saw the blog. But he wasn't there tonight. I have been waiting to get a chance to speak to him. I have a couple things I would like to let him know. I also want to find out who it was that he told. The other guy never said anything to me at all through out the night. I was also ignored by one other guy. I am not sure if that was on purpose or not.

I have been keeping a low profile with the reserves right now. I am not sure who knows and who doesn't. More importantly I don't know who knows the whole story or part of it. I have been letting them come to me and talk. If they talk to me first then I figure all is good with them. Several of them talked to me so that is good. But I am not sure about two of them who were there plus the one who wasn't. Only time will tell.

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.

Oh Crap

While at work I was called into the Chief's office. I was not sure what was going on until he asked me to have a seat and close the door. I was worried about what I did. It is never good when an unscheduled meeting starts off like that. I was told that he was told that a reserve was uncomfortable with something on my facebook or MySpace page. He said he doesn't pry into my personal life. He wants to keep our friendship, but he has to deal with this issue because it affects the fire department. I wasn't sure what he was speaking of because I am careful about what I post on those mediums. I was asked to deal with it and possibly talk to the reserve in question.

After the meeting I went to facebook and MySpace to see if something was on there that I didn't know about. With nothing found, I figured it must have been something in the blog. This has been written in for the last five years. There is a lot of stuff in it. So I started to try to find anything. I found one comment that was not written about anyone specific at all. No identifying information was given that would point to anyone either. But due to what I was told I figured that paragraph was causing the problem.

The last thing I wanted to do was cause some sort of problem. So I figured I would delete what was written just so it wouldn't be out there anymore. I felt horrible sitting in the chief's office when he was talking to me. I hate it when being gay is brought up with people I work with. I like to keep my personal life and work life in separate worlds.

I don't know how mad the person is at me. I don't know what it will be like to be around him. I don't know what it will be like to be around the others that now know.

After taking care of the problem I wrote an E-mail to the person explaining that I am sorry that there was an uneasiness felt. I let him know that I am horribly embarrassed. I figured that I will lose his respect, but that is what I deserve.

It is frustrating that something that I wrote that was not attributed to anyone specific was used to make someone feel uneasy. But I cannot let that go. I had to delete it anyway. It will not take away what happened, but it will not be used in the future in the same way.

Seeing Wakeman

Today the plan was to spend time in the office before heading back to Pullman so I could get to work on Saturday morning. I was able to get some stuff done at the office but I didn't get anything resolved with the bugs. I loaded up my computers and some books and headed out.

I texted Wakeman about meeting up on my way through Ellensburg. He called me up and said he didn't live there anymore, but as it turned out he would be in town doing some moving. He told me to call when I was close to see if he was still around.

When I was about ten miles out I called and he was still in town. I met up with him at The Tav. He and his friend were having some food and beer. I sat down and we talked about what each other was doing. It was nice to see him. He is the one who pulled me aside one day at the fire department and asked if I was gay. Many people at the FD know and some would spread it around, but very few have ever asked me. He said that he had heard, but wanted to ask me. I really respected that about him from the beginning.

I enjoyed my time working with him and I sad to see him go. For one summer before he left we were running daytime calls all the time. He never cared about the response level of the call he would go on everything like I would.

Computer Issues Most of Today

A fan is starting to squeak a little bit on my computer. So I was testing the different fans to see what one causes the squeak. I had done a reboot of the computer. But I wanted it to stay shut down. So as it was loading I hit the power button. I knew that was probably a bad idea. Before I know it the computer is in bad shape. A file was missing and the computer would not boot. Oh great!

I tried to use Windows Home Server to fix it. But each image I used did not fix it. So I figured a reformat of the hard drive was in order. I used my Windows XP CD and formatted the harddrive. Then I used Windows Home Server and put the latest image back on. The computer worked! Thank goodness. But that ate up part of the day.

Once it was up and running I was able to get work done. Tonight I was on duty and we have training. We went to the tower and ran a water evolution. As always there is something added in. We had a MayDay in the middle of it. But it wasn't over the top.

When training was done I got home and I went to g.com. I check it out from time to time but I rarely chat with anyone. But I found someone who was "Way Right". So I started a conversation with him. We talked for a while. Seems like we are pretty much like minded for the most part. It was nice to have a conversation.

Death Investigation Class Day Four

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

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

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

Freak Hail Storm

Today there was a freak hail storm that left more than an inch of hail on the roads down by Dissmores. But near station two we got nothing to speak of. I had come down to the station for a call. While I was standing by Stallcop showed up for something else. He told me about the hail in the town. He said we are probably going to get called out for a car accident.

Within a couple minutes we were toned out to a motorcycle wreck. We got first on scene. I set up command and did my thing. As we were getting ready to park Rescue we got another call. We got on scene the same time the ambulance did. They transported and we went back to the station.

Soon the reserves were called on to do a transfer to Spokane. I called in on it and we ran the patient to Spokane. Drew and I had some dinner before heading back. It was a nice trip over all.

I talked to Drew a little bit about the whole homosexual thing. He asked me about it years ago when the article appeared in the newspaper where I was named for the lack of gay magazines at the Bookie.

I was telling him about some of the other things that happened since thing at the jail and at a call once with a WSU Police officer. I also told him I didn't want the reserves to know. I know that at least one of them knows but I am not worried about that so much as I am about the newer guys finding out.

Wet Lab at WSU

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

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

Blowing into the PBT to start the day

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

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

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

Doing a HGN test

Trying to stand on one leg without falling

Doing the walk and turn event

One more shot of the walk and turn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Movie Night at Russells

After working out I spent some time taking photos and cleaning off my driveway of snow. I also cut away some of the tree limbs from the tress that cover my walkway. It is nice and clear for walking through that area now.

From NE Terre View Drive on the way back from my workout


The Bumblebee Before cleaning off its snow


The Bumblebee filled with *some* of the snow in the driveway

Russell, Nick, and I met up tonight to watch Another Gay Movie. It is more or less a spoof of American Pie. With some parts of other movies. It had some very funny parts. I agreed with Nick when the part where one of the gay guys came out to him mom.

He always wore lipstick, fingernail polish. He was very feminine, and just girl-like. But he thought he mom was clueless. So finally he came out to his mom, she looked at him with some surprise, then said "Well, Duh!"

Looking Back on the Last Year

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Happy Birthday Scotty!

Well I got the normal phone calls and text messages from people wishing me a happy birthday. I got several on facebook and MySpace as well.

Reed McPherson wrote
Happy Birthday. Don't mix too many of your drugs with your booze. Have a fun one

Andrew Wilcox wrote
Happy B-day man, hope your recovery doesn't hinder you from partying tonight!

Sarah Daoud wrote
Happy Birthday Scotty!!! Hope you have a good one!!

Bryce Cuello wrote
Happy Birthday Man! Hope you have a good one!

Kristiné M. Reeves (Spokane, WA) wrote
Happy Birthday! Loved the photos as of late...you are looking stellar!

Denise Keeton wrote
Happy Happy Birthday Scotty!!

Dax Berven wrote
Happy early Birthday old man

When I got to work today there was a $10.00 gift certificate for me from NetUpdate. They also made cookies and put them in the break room.

I actually got a couple things productive done today and checked in. Then the rest of the day it was spending time in meetings and having lunch. We went to Crossroads mall. Ricky, Noah, and I met up with Chris a former employee.

While there I got a couple different styles of die for my board game. I got several styles so I can play with them and see what I like the best.

The traffic home was worse than normal, but probably normal for the time of day. It just seemed like everything was backed up. I don't like to spend time in traffic on my birthday. I was thinking that they should just open up the roads and step aside for the birthday boy.

When I got home my special dinner was being cooked. It was fatback and potatoes. Following dinner I got a universal power supply for my computer from my mom for my birthday. She made a cake with pudding topping. It was very good.

Compared to last year it was a pretty tame birthday. That is okay though. Actually, this is the first birthday I have been here for a while. My last few birthdays have been spent with just a couple friends.

I am thinking if there is anything ground breaking to say right now. It is the one time a year I can reflect on the past year of my life and think about it. But I have not done that. Maybe I can do that tomorrow. Make a decision what letter grades I earned this year in many categories. I am not sure it was one I can look at as one of the best. That is a shame. Every year should be better than the one before it. That would be a sign of a good life.

Maybe that means it is time for me to uproot my life as it currently sits. Maybe it is time for me to move to some new random place and get a new job. Get new friends. Get new activities. Just do something different.

But then again, when I think about the car fire recently and how it was still a new experience to me, that leads me to believe I still have things I can do here.

I think if there is one thing I work on this year it is to be more active in my down time.

I have worked hard this year to keep on top of things. Like washing my clothes and new truck, not when I am out of clothes or I can't see the paint on the truck, but on a regular schedule. I do things and put things away rather than leaving things out when I am done. It is the new more orderly self.

But what is a problem is that when my work is done, and there is nothing more to do, I need to get to the rec center. Go for a walk. Go for a bike ride. Do something that will keep me from sitting around the house watching TV. I really want to get into the swimming pool and get some swim time in. That is the goal.

I hope in one year from now I can read this and say that I did a good job keep up with that change I would like to make.

One thing that I have noticed about myself is that it seems more people know about my homosexuality than don't know in terms of my daily interactions with people. I thought I had done a good job keeping it quiet at the jail. But that is not the case. Everyone seems to know and those who don't are told by those who do. I don't like it when people tell others. That is not their business to do that.

So really the people who don't know are those over in Seattle. All my friends who I went to high school with other than Matt. He found out when I admitted it to him on the Rose Bowl trip.

More Zeppoz poker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Got my Shopping Done

I got up this morning and there was a response from the cop I knew on gay.com. He answered my question and pondered who I was. I didn't tell him straight up, but I responded to his question of me.

I went to Safeway and did my shopping. I had been needing to go there for quite a while. While there I saw Bruce. We stopped and chatted for a while. Later I saw C-Bass. Coach Doba was there shopping. I also saw the Pullman Fire ambulance crew buying some stuff for dinner.

I got home and put everything away. I had some time before I had to go back to Zeppoz. I got the IM address of the guy who I know that is gay. I also responded to the cops' message back to me.

Then it was off to Zeppoz for the tournament. There was a ten-six-seven there again. I have seen him the last three weeks that I was there. I finally found out who it was. He is a local. I always want to play on his table, but we get different tables.

In today's game I decided that I would not do more than one re-buy. That is all I ended up needing. I made it longer that I had in previous tournament. I was out in the seventh place. They paid the top four, with more than two-hundred going to first place. I was the second lowest in chips on the final table. But I won a big hand. Only to lose it later on. Then I had only enough for one big blind. I only had three hands to get something to play. I got K-9 suited. I went all in. I got two-pair, but I lose to someone with trips. That was my night.

I played a table game. I lost nearly twenty bucks, but I changed tables. I won back my money and walked out of there even.

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.

Spokane Transfer with Suggs

I got up with a page for a transfer. In a little bit they asked for reserves. I called down and said I would do the transfer. I was doing it with Suggs. The transfer went off without a problem. It was my first trip to Sacred Heart on a transfer.

We stopped at A&W on the way out of town. On the way back he was talking about playing hockey. He was talking about hockey skates. He said this one style looked faggy. Then he looked at me and said "no offense". I am not sure if that is because he also knows or if he just thought I was offended. Which I wasn't of course.

Later after we got back I was going to be on Rescue tonight. But I also needed to go to Dan and Michele's anniversary. I went to the Moose at six o'clock pm. I saw Michael B there as well as some of the others. I got some chow and then went home. It was a pretty quiet night for a while.

Then about thirty until midnight an EMS call came out. We transported. We sat at the station chatting about the previous arson's in Pullman. More specifically about the issues while on the fire ground.

Parrish said he was going to call it a night. He was already scheduled to get off early. But within about ten minutes of Parrish leaving we got a structure fire. I was out the door with Williams on Rescue. We got to the scene and were the second ones there. We pulled a crosslay and started to fight the fire.

It had already gotten through the roof and we put some water on it for a while. But soon we ran out and had to wait until the PL got us hooked up with the hydrant. We then had the blitz line, the masterstream, and our handline fighting the fire. Water was all over the place freezing. My turnouts were getting frozen solid.

We finally started to beat the fire back. It was in a twenty by thirty-five out building at Cougar Crest. Soon we were sent in closer with the blitz line with the other guys from ambulance. We got the remainder of the fire put out. Then we worked on a full bottle worth of overhaul.

We helped to clean up the hose. Rescue stayed to monitor the fire until some reserves got there with the utility. We ended up having to put some water on some fire that got going again. I was able to look around the structure for evidence of what caused the fire. I then spent time asking Rich if he agreed with my assessment of what I had found. He confirmed the things I was finding. I have to say this one was pretty easy. It is not like I am some incredible fire investigator, but it felt good to have an idea of what I was figuring out.

I went home and worked on the fire department application until six in the morning before I went to sleep.

Playoffs Day One

The plan was to include spending time on my garage. But instead I was on the phone with Russell. He invited me to go to coffee with Jason. I accepted the invite. Russell told me that Nick and he broke up. That was a surprise to me. They have been together for a bunch of years. In gay years, it has been like twenty years.

Due to the trip to Cafe Moro I decided I only had time to wash my truck. I got it washed up and then went to get Russell. He noticed that I washed my truck. Then he quickly noticed it looked longer. Once he got in, he knew it was a different truck.

We met Jason down at Cafe Moro. I got a hot cocoa and they got some coffee. I told them the story about buying my truck. When we were done they it was off to Blockbuster to get a movie to watch.

We got Wild Hogs and watched it at Jason's on his projection TV. It was a pretty funny movie. We were done around four in the afternoon. I took Russell home and went home myself.

I got ready for softball tonight. We had a men's game in the first round of the playoffs. We were playing the Bash Brothers. We hit the ball well. I was pitching because Dave was out of town. I was enjoying pitching. During the first batter my first three pitches were balls, then I came back with a good pitch. After that I did very well pitching. They were not very patient. No one walked and many people hit some pretty awful pitches.

We went on to win pretty easily. I was two for three with a walk. One well hit ball to deep right field but the guy was able to track it down at catch it. We went on to win.

Ryan and I went to the KZUU meeting. It lasted about thirty-five minutes. We went to Cougar Country and got some dinner. I was trying to relax, but I knew I had a big softball game on Monday. I didn't know if I had enough women for it. We went to Russell's to give him a ride to work.

Russell was able to talk a little bit about his situation. Earlier in the day we talked about it. He said he was thankful to have me around to talk to about it.

Shelf Construction

I was restless about my shelf construction and decided to go to get the wood and other needed parts to start my garage cleanup projects. I was at Pullman Building Supply when Wilson called to see if I was going to come down on the call. There was someone who needed help. I got to the station, but we were cancelled before we really got going.

I went back to PBS and got my wood and other items to build the shelves and storage areas for the garage. I got home and got going on those things. I used the tailgate of my truck as a work bench and started to make the necessary measurements to cut the wood. I started with the two shelves that will sit above the garage door. I had to make twelve boards sixteen inches long. Then I connected the five-inch L-brackets. I realized I only had enough brackets for half of the project so I was going to have to go back to PBS.

I got another call and called up Wilson. We went on it, and it turned out to be nothing. We fueled up Rescue and I picked up what I needed from PBS. When we got back to the station we saw D-twelve go by the station going code. Then they were on scene just after going past our station. About two minutes later we were getting toned out to their call, as it turned out to be ours. It was a big gaspipe that got hit with a backhoe. Engine thirty-two went to the scene and took command. They had us go to the nearest hydrant with Engine thirty-one, which was in front of the Auto Body Supercenter. Wilson and I spent time talking about engineer calculations and engineer stuff waiting for our call to duty. But the pipe was fixed before any major catastrophe happened.

We went back to the station and had some pizza that Blanks got for everyone. I took Wilson to Beasley and then went home. I got more work done on my shelf project. I got all the cuts made for the wood and started to assemble everything. I got one of them hung in the garage. I then put some stuff away. It felt good to get that done.

I talked to Juan. He was not feeling well at all so he decided to stay home for the night. But I spent time on g.com chatting with people. I actually got to sleep at nearly four in the morning. I had to be up less than six hours later to take Wilson out doing some drive time in the engine.

Helping out some friends

This afternoon I went on a tour of the stadium with the fire department to learn where things are located. It looks pretty nice, but there is more work to do.

Russell asked me to give him a ride, Peter called asking if I could help him haul trash to the dump. Both guys needed my help at four o'clock PM. I told Peter that I would help him second and f the dump closed before I got to him I would help him tomorrow.

Russell and I went to the lawyer to talk about his recent string of bad luck. It really didn't amount to much in that meeting. Then I rushed to Peter's and we picked him up. Went to the dump made it by five minutes.

Then back to Peter's to get his roommate. We went to Taco Bell for dinner over in Moscow. Then I gave everyone a ride home while listening to Chris Rock on the radio.

I make some more measurements in my garage fr the shelving. I also found a resource online that wrote about another idea I will be doing. I am going to get a fair amount of storage. I will work on building those things over the weekend when I have time.

I spent some time on g.com chatting. I found Juan out there. He is going to come over tomorrow night. We are planning on watching a movie and hanging out. But I also found out there is a show in Moscow. I will see if he wants to go to that. I am not sure if I want to go for sure, but it would get me out of the house, and I would have someone to go with.

Ryan's Wedding

Today is the big day. I woke up and got cleaned up. Russell and I needed to go to the tux rental shop to get new pieces for the tux. My shoes needed to be bigger as well as a better fitting shirt size. Once that was completed Russell and I were off to find some roses.

We drove around for a little while and bumped into a place called Just Roses. We were able to get two red and two pink roses. We went back to the hotel to check out and send our postcards that we wrote last night.

Russell and I took Ryan's parents to dinner at Franks Diner. I had to cut out a little early and pick up Anna and one of her friends from the mall. I took them to the hotel and then parked my truck.

I had been stressing about the best man speech, but this morning in the shower I figured out the direction I wanted to take the speech. I was going to talk about what friends are and what a best friend is. I was going talk about meeting Ryan and playing softball and hanging out with him over the years. I felt better now that I knew what I was going to say.

We went to the hotel and started to get ready. Nick came and I got some photos of him and Russell together.

Russell and Nick looking dignified

Once everyone got their tuxes on we went around and took photos. I got one of Ryan in the dressing room in a chair. I also got Russell and one of me in the chair as well.

Ryan in the chair

Russell in the chair

Me in the chair looking like I am from the nineteenth century

I also got one of me being silly.

Being Silly

We then went out and took photos around the area. I also was getting photos. I got one of Ryan's brother and his new brother-in-law.

Ben (ten-six-seven), Ryan's new brother-in-law

Keith, Ryan's younger brother

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

We went and got some more photos and then made our way to the reception room. They made a grand entrance for Ryan and Anna. I sat at the table with Ryan and Anna. I went and made my way through the line for some chow.

As it turned out Russell and I were sitting at a table with a couple other gay people. So it was the gay table. With Nick there as well. We did not know the other guys, but it was pretty obvious about them.

It came time for the toast. I got up to give my speech. I did a great job doing it. I was prepared and it went smoothly. I did not try to be funny, but the parts that were lighter got some laughter. That was good.

Making My Best Man Speech

Ryan and Anna did their first dance together.

The first dance

The first dance

Russell and Nick got out there to dance a little bit as well.

When the reception got going Ben gave Russell and I a cigar. We went outside to smoke it. It was not very tasty. Russell got a great photo of him smoking it.

Russell smoking the cigar

As the night was winding down I signed the paperwork for Ryan and Anna's marriage. While we were doing that Keith mention that he lost a stud from his tux. Ryan looked at me and said "So have you".

Records Not Broken

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

Michael B really wanted the doubles record. I was going for that one too. He needed one to break it, and I needed two. We gave Michael B so much ribbing after not getting that record. We went to My Office to hang out for a while.

I was disappointed because I hate getting ready to play softball only to have it cancelled. I took some photos of the guys. Michael B was upset that he was not able to get his record. He said "that is gay" in reference to the other team not being there. Then he looked at me and said no offense. So he must know, but if he does that was the first indication that he knows. Only a small number of guys actually know, and those who do never make an issue out of it.

We went down to My Office and had some food and just hung out. Some of the guys got some beer and drank. I had my typical pop. I went home and worked on the website after the bar to get it completed and uploaded.

Happy Birthday America!

The fourth is a great time. I love fireworks and I love the time in the park. I still think back to the old tradition of going to Ocean Shores with the gang. We would stay down at this camp ground and we would light off fireworks and party all the time. We would drive on the beach and just have a great time. I still remember my first time there. We were staying at a state camp ground. When I showed up the Confederate flag was flying. One of the guys came up to me and said that he made sure it was put right side up. Making sure the star in the center right side up. Dave and I would always drive down the beach just after dark and helped to pull people out stuck in the sand. That was our good deed of the day we did each day out there.

Over the years the group had split up and the Oceans Shores trips are no longer. But now I go to Sunnyside Park with the fire department. We show off the fire engines. Wilcox and I went on a call together before it was time to get ready to head to the fire station for the show.

I drove the ambulance up to the park again this year. When we got up there we set everything up. Then people started to show up. We helped them try on the gear. Took photos of everyone. I climbed the ladder and got some photos of the park and the area.

A couple people I knew came down and got in the gear included Andy the poker player I met through Mike. BKoe was working for the parks department, but he stopped by to try on the stuff. Dan's wife, Denise stopped by.

I helped a couple people on EMS things, but both were minor injuries. While I was going to one I saw Juan from Colfax. I have not seen him in a long time. But I walked by him. We made eye contact and I wanted to stay and talk to him, but I had to go and help someone who needed EMS help. When I got back he was gone. So I ended up calling him to say hello and let him know that I was sorry for missing him. I think I will invite him over to watch a movie again. He is a very nice guy.

The day went off very well. We got out of there just after eleven o'clock and got all the rigs back in service. It is weird that I have to work in the morning. It feels like I should have another day off. In the future I need to take the day after the fourth off.

Day Two of the Emerald City Classic

We had our first game at ten in the morning again. So I was up at the field at nine in the morning for warm ups. We were in the rec C-division. It is a single elimination tournament from here out. We lose we go home. Our first game was against another Seattle team.

We should have really beat them down, but we allowed them to scored eleven runs in one inning which game them a huge boost. But we battled back and ended up beating them by a couple runs. We then went to play Chicago.

They scored early and often against us. We could not get runs going. We had a play at second base where our guy was running to second. Their shortstop was in the way and they collided. The short stop was down for a minute. Then he got up. Later in the game he was hurting bad and was having a hard time breathing.

I had hit a ball to the new shortstop. He made a throw across the diamond. I ran out the ball and was safe. When I got to first I looked over and he was on the ground being helped by a couple EMT's. Then an ambulance came and took him to the hospital. We ended up losing.

On the way to Red Robin to have some lunch with the team I had a message from my mom. She said that Hargrove quit the M's. That was a shock with the M's on a seven game win streak and being four games out of first place.

When we were done eating we were sitting around the table talking. I remember something I just learned about the diameter of the opening of a glass compared to its height. That it is usually quite a bit larger. So I was showing everyone. I ended up putting the glass on top of a container with the packets of sugar, plus a cell phone. I measured it out and the mouth opening was still bigger. Then the glass fell from about three inches off the table and actually broke. Everyone was laughing.

When the food was done I went to Best Buy and got some CD-R's that do lightscribe for my new burner. I went home and watched the M's game. It was Hargroves last game. The M's won again.

ECC Day One

I had to get up early to be up at the softball fields by nine in the morning. Playing cards to the wee hours did not help my sleep, but that is okay. I won money at cards, and now I get to play softball.

The team is mostly the same as last season with a couple of new players. We went out and quickly lost our first game. We ended up playing five games today and only won one of them at the end of the day. We started at the field at nine in the morning. We played five games and left there at eight o'clock at night.

Our pitcher took a ball off the chin like an upper cut as the ball bounced off the ground. He went down and went to the hospital, getting himself ten stitches. I was put in for him that game, because I was sitting out at first. I got a base hit. One of the few I got today. I had some walks, but I couldn't hit the ball today. I was hitting poorly. We also had some pretty long breaks at times between games. One break was about three hours.

After all the games a couple of us went to Seattle to get some pizza at a place close to R-Place. At first I wasn't going to go, but as I got on the highway to head home I decided to go out. All I knew was the place had Off Broadway in its name.

It was not in the phone book so I had a hard time. I just drove around a little bit back and forth and then I found a place called Billy's Off Broadway. It was the correct place. The pizza was good. We sat around talking about a little of this and a little of that before leaving. The others were going out to the bars, I decided then to go home.

Years of Being Crafty for Nothing

My day on Mercer Island Boat Patrol was cancelled for today so that meant I had a day off and I could do what I wanted. I decided I would work the jail. But I had some things to take care of in Pullman before I left to go to Colfax.

When I got to Colfax I went into Control. I ran control for about an hour before going to the Auditors office to get the tabs for my boat and trailer, but because I did not license them last year, if I were to do it today, I would have to pay for all of last year, plus this coming year. If I wait until the end of the month, then I will only have to pay for the next year. That made it a no-brainer.

I sold a phone card to a guy in Orange. Sgt Poffenroth came with me to make sure I could log into Swanson. She didn't think I would be able to, but I was able to login just fine. So I got the phone card sold. We were heading up stairs to the staff office when she asked if I was the one who always put the backgrounds of the military aircraft. I laughed. I said I don't even know what that one was. She said, you would probably put pictures of naked men. It because pretty clear she knew that I am gay. She could see me blushing, I could feel my face go flush.

Later I went to her office and asked how she knew. She said he has known for years. She figured it out on her own. She said pretty much every officer knows. I was shocked for sure. I knew that Tom knew, so that would increase the chances of others knowing. Captain came in and he confirmed they had known for years. Poff also was shocked that I didn't know that they knew. Which is a sign that no one really cares at all. I told her how careful I always was with that information because I didn't want people there to know.

Poff said a while back when Donna was trying to set me up with a girl over in the Treasurers office, that she had to tell Captain to let Donna know it would be a moot point trying to get me hooked up. Then Captain said that they knew I was dating the guy who worked at JTI. I knew they were talking about Thomas. That surprised me because he didn't know who Thomas was, just that I was dating someone from JTI. But Thomas and I were only friends, we never dated. Then he said that we are in a small town. Just like Monte said to me a long time ago.

I let Captain know that Thomas and I were just friends. But we use to joke about living in SGC "South Gay Colfax". He laughed. Poffenroth was cracking up over the fact that I was in the dark about them knowing about me for this whole time. One of my biggest fears was that they would treat me differently or that the inmates would find out. None of that has been the case.

Now I wonder who all actually knows and who doesn't know. If they all know in the jail, do the people over at Colfax Fire know. No one at Colfax Fire has ever said anything to me. But it would be interesting if they have known for a long time too.

While working at the jail I got a text message about playing some poker tonight around eleven-thirty pm. I went to Peter's to play. He had people who work with him at SEL over to play. Kevin, a ten-six-seven, from Dissmore's was also there. Blue eyes and blonde hair and tall. Plus very nice. He was a good sight for the night. While there another ten-six-seven showed up. He was someone who was stopping by with some over people.

We played for hours and hours. In fact it was getting light out. Pretty soon the light coming in the window was actually casting shadows on the poker table. The game broke up around seven o'clock in the morning. When it was done I had lost a total of six bucks, and that was good considering I was all-in a couple times.

One of them I knew I was being beat. There were two Queens on the board. I had a King. There was one King on the board, so I had two pair and I knew Kevin had trips. We went to the river and I knew I needed a King, and a King hit giving Kevin and I a full-house, but mine was better. As it turned out one other guy who was in also had a King, so it turned out we had a one-outer. It came through.

Another time I was playing and had pocket-eights. All night long eights have been hitting. So I played them aggressively. I ended up going all in. Kevin again was playing against me. He had over-cards and got two of them on the flop. He was leading. The turn had nothing to help either of us. I was all-in and I needed to have an eight. I was dealing. I burned a card. Then I held the card over the spot where I needed to turn it over. I held on to it for a while because I did not want to see it. Then rapidly I flipped it over. It was an eight. I had won. Everyone was laughing. Someone said the way I did it reminded them of the movie Maverick.

Mr and Mrs Caessens

I got ready for Chuck and Mirenda's wedding. I got them a card and went to Sunnyside Park. I took more than six hundred photos through out the day. They got married on the waters edge. When the service was done they got on a small row boat and went onto the water.

Then we went up and had a BBQ. I was there for a couple hours talking with people and we were having a good time.

Chuck, Mirenda, John, and I went to My Office later on to have some beer and play darts and pool. We were there until nearly closing time. John and I played a lot of darts and a few games of pool. John helped me think through some shots. I would ask him some of his thoughts on what ball I should hit.

We spent some time talking about the fire service and other topics came up including being gay and being able to use gaydar. They asked me if I was able to tell who as the wedding was gay. I had thought these two guys I saw were gay. And sure enough I was correct.

Interesting News on the Homefront

So I get a phone call from my real estate agent. She told me the people who are trying to sell their house on Brandon were planning on renting a place on Clay Ct. But the place they were going to rent is still being rented by the previous renters. So they have no place to rent. They would like to be somewhere for the next three years. So there is a chance that they would rent my place and I would buy theirs. Don't know if it will happen, but that is what is happening there.

I got my boat dewinterized today. I will go pick it up tomorrow.

I went to the fire station planning on doing rig checks and then heading back home to talk to my mom. But then I found out we had to do the oil changes and maintenance on the small gas engine items from the rescue. That took us a couple hours to work through all of them. So I was out and about until almost ten at night. I talked to my mom while we were working. I told her what had happened.

I went to Russell's place after I was done with the fire department. We were talking about the Seattle Pride parade and what happened in Seattle last year. I pulled up an article that I read and I read it to him with some of the comments of the people who were there.

Once Beren showed up, we changed subjects and just hung out and had some dinner. I left around one o'clock in the morning. It was pretty quiet, except for one call at nearly four in the morning. That was hard to get out of bed for.

Incredibly Tired

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drive By Cellphoning

I was so tired I just couldn't get myself out of bed. I had planned on getting up around ten o'clock am to call George. I finally got up around noon and called him about getting my truck seat fixed. I left a message and he called me back a while later. By they I had planned on going to play some poker at Mr. Z's, but I wanted to get my truck seat fixed. He gave me directions to his place and I headed there. He has a really nice house over looking the LC valley. I helped him remove the seat and chatted with him while he was fixing it. It did not take very long compared to what I thought it would take. It was a total of two hours. He glued all the foam back together as well as added reinforcements to it so it will not happen again anytime soon.

After he was done he took me to his house to show me around. he had a very large house that he built himself. His downstairs had twelve foot ceilings so he can display all his hunting kills. He has a ton of those as well. I got back to Pullman with some time to spare before rig checks. I made myself some dinner and kicked back ever so slightly.

Before long though I had to go to the station. I first spent time with the new guys on their map tests. We got several of them knocked out. While working on the map tests a call went out so I asked Tyson to go on it in my place. It was only a fire alarm. By the time they got back I had started to wash out the bay. We got another call. I went on that one and had Tyson go over some of the tools on Engine while we were gone.

Finally we were able to get back and just work on the rig checks. We were nearly done. Tyson and I did the pump test while Keith and Brian showed the new guys how to use the tools.

When we were all done I went home and started on the project for the HazMat team. I have a bunch of DVD's they want copies of. I wanted to go to bed because I have to be up for the radio show, plus I am leaving town and wanted some sleep before I would have to prepare for the road.

As I was working away on the DVD copying project I was also working on my organizing of the boxes of files and papers I have that I need to get put away in order to complete the move-in process.

I was able to get a fair amount of that complete as I started the next DVD in the machine. But on the last DVD I was having problems with it not finishing the read.

Before I got to that point, however, I got a call. When I got onscene I was helping with the patient and Matt, from WSU PD, made a joke about the patient having the same issues that I was. I had heard why we were there and then when he said that wasn't sure I heard him correctly. I was taken aback slightly because I was unsure if he said that because he knew about me or if he was just making a joke. It because clear to me it was a joke at the time. As we were walking out of the apartment he said he was sorry. I then told him I heard he gives reach-arounds, something Kelly, yesterday, said I need to joke with him about.

That was that as far as I knew. But when I got back to my place and I was working on the DVD project I decided to check my facebook account and there was a message from Carl.

I was talking to Matt who told me what he said to you at the Medical call. He said that he felt really bad about it and it was not his intention to offend anyone. He always jokes around but wanted me to tell you he was sorry.

So when I saw this I figured he must now know, if he didn't already know. I tried to get more information from Carl. It seems that somehow Monte told Matt about me. What really surprised me is that Monte knows. I am not sure how he would have found out. I am curious as to how Monte found out, unless he remembers it from that one article that Rob wrote for the Evergreen. So now Matt knows.

I hate it when people find out. It causes me concern. It is the whole idea that when only I know they other person is normal or what they do to me is them acting out who the are. But when they know I am gay and I know they know then I seem to be hypersensitive about it insofar as I am always wondering what they are thinking. Because now everything I do will go through their "gay" filter. They will wonder if I did something because I am gay. That will be on their mind, and because I know they know I am gay, then I know that they are thinking certain things, therefore I get concerned about what they are thinking. So rather than them being themselves around me they will self-censor and I can never really have good friends if they are always afraid of being who they are.

They should not worry about making any kind of jokes. I don't want them thinking they need to keep their back to the wall around me. I want them to judge me on being a softball player, or a firefighters, or whatever I am doing. Not based on the fact that I am gay.

How do you explain that to someone? John G. seems to understand what I am saying and he gives me a hard time. Which is how John acts, so he does not treat me differently. But what about Matt. How can I explain to him the concept of being gay I don't fully understand it. I can explain that I am not happy that I am gay. That it is not something where I make a conscious choice to be attracted to certain guys. I can try to let him know that I would love to be attracted to women and that I could live out a normal life. But because I cannot the only thing that will help is if people don't stop being themselves around me.

I want him to understand that I believe that you must choose to be offended. And in no way was I offended on the call. He probably thought that because of my reaction, but my reaction was because I was concerned that he knew.

I now have to try to talk to him and hope that he doesn't start to act differently around me. I hope that I can also get him and Monte to not say anything to anyone as I want the information to not make it out to everyone. I like having my own little secret.

So to top that off we got two more calls. One was for a rollover car accident. Turns out that no one got hurt, but we were on scene for a bit. We got the rig cleaned up. It was nearly five in the morning I figured that we were done for the night, but nope. We had a drive-by cellphoning. That is where someone sees what appears to be a car accident and rather than stopped to see if people are okay, they keep driving and call it in on their cellphone.

The problem is that many times no one is hurt so we all go out there to find the person is fine, or that no one is even there anymore. I wish people would just stop for a couple minutes and see if the person needs an ambulance before calling it in. That would help everyone involved in the situation.

Being with Ben

I still cannot get a hold of Peter. He can be so frustrating some times. One week he is there and easy to get a hold of, then the next week he falls off the face of the Earth and does not return calls nor answer his phone. We needed to contact each other all week about our show time. He has not returned my calls nor E-mail, so finally I just filled out the application and sent it in for myself. I am going to try to get back the Monday eleven o'clock AM to one o'clock PM show.

Ben called me today and asked if I wanted to hang out with him. I sure did. I had dinner in the oven, so I waited until that was done and had some pizza before heading to Ben's. We were going to watch Nacho Libre and Cannonball Run. Nacho Libre was one of those movies that was okay to watch once, but I probably would not own it.

Following that we watched Cannonball Run. It has been a while since I last watched it. There were a lot of big names in that movie. I think some of the things they do in that movie is lost of younger people.

After those movies we hung out and started to talk about guns, police, and some stops we were in. Then Jordan came over after the drag show from Moscow. He was going to contact a guy he had met there. We were giving him advice on what he should say when he sends the texts back and forth. He did not know that I was the same guy he had spoken with online in the past.

After he left Ben, Ashton, and I were talking a little bit about homosexuality. Sounds like Ben was sort of freaked out by it at first but has warmed up to it. It is funny, because Ben is very hands on and has given me friendly hugs from time to time. He still doesn't know that I am gay, but after last night and the things I said, I wonder if it made him wonder.

CISD Team

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

Afterwards I went to Safeway and did some shopping for some food items I was running low on. When I got there Richard texted me about going to Val Halla. So I decided I would go there after I was done shopping. When I got there it was not too packed. I met up with Richard and Tyson was there. He came over and said hello.

Richard and I stood around chatting about various things, then at one point he asked me about tops and bottoms. He said he recently learned about that concept and was wondering how gays knew who was a top and bottom when trying to meet someone. I told him one was in mannerisms.

I was there until after one in the morning. We started to play pool and we kept on winning. We won three games in a row, and the last two were ugly wins, but we won. Finally a new group of guys came and won. That was my cue to leave because I was going to meet up with Russell for the Wednesday night dinner.

I got there and the food was still warm. I got some potatoes and gravy with meat. It was grub. We watched Snakes on a Plane. It wasn't a horrible movie, but now that I have seen it I will not have to watch it again.

Poker Night in Colfax

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christmas at Jon's

I made my way down to Renton to get Justin his Christmas present. It was a fifty dollar gift card for a video game place he likes to go to. I also thought of a funny joke to play on Justin.

I got a paper towel and wrote "Scooby Doo" on it. Then I wrapped it and gave it to him as his gift. He fought the tears for a moment, then he started to cry. I then let him in on the real present. He felt better.

We had chineese food over at Jon's for Christmas. It was fun. We were there for a couple hours eating and playing games. It was good to spend time with teh family.

I met up with Brian a little after I left Jon's. We drove into Seattle and went to The Cuff. We hung out there for about an hour. There was a fair number of people there. I had some pop and we were outside talking for a while.

Brian was getting mad when I was not getting close to him and I seemed to pull away. I explained to him the whole issue of my softball team thinking I am not gay. And that I don't want them to find out when they see me having a gay guy all over me. It is a long story about what happened. But pretty much they thought I was gay, then they talked themselves out of it. I let them talk themselves out of me being gay. Now that it is several years later, I feel that it would be bad if they found out about me now.

Brian doesn't understand that. But he is a lot of like a woman. He calls and wants all my time. Anyway, we drove around after that for a while and ended up in Renton. We hung out by the river for a while and called it a night around three in the morning.

Happy Thirty-Third Scotty!

That is correct as the year marches on I always get closer to my birthday. This year it came on December Eighteenth, just like every year before it. I had planned on a Monday Night Football party with a celebration on my birth.

I went out and bought some supplies. I made Chili-Phily and nachos. Ryan came from Spokane. It was so good to have him come down! Russell came over and Ryan asked him to be a groomsmen at Ryan's wedding. Dan came over with two of the boys and we hung out eating and talking about stuff while watching the end of the Monday Night football game. Russell and I joked about making Ryan perform in a drag show for his bachelor party. We also said it would be a "fabulous" party with us doing it.

Russell and Dan left as the guys from the fire training come over. Aaron and his girlfriend, Jen, came over. As did Tyson, George, and the Uskoski's made it over as well. I showed them around the house. We all hung out in the kitchen drinking and laughing. It was so great to have the Dan and Michele make it over.

When everyone left Dan and Michele hung around a while longer drinking some more beer. We were talking about homsexuality and what is it like to be gay and trying to hide it for the most part. They left around one in the morning and I went to my den. I was pretty tipsy and I drank a ton of water and chatted with a couple people online for a while before making my way to bed. I was talking to Joe about being gay a little bit. I was hoping he would tell me something, but he is still not saying anything at all.

Welcome back Haymon

Today started out with my last day of work for the week. I went into Pullman. Ryan and I met up for lunch at Pizza Pipeline.

After I got off work I went to Colfax. I hung out at the fire station for a while. I sorted through my change that I had on my night stand. I had more then one hundred bucks. I got it all rolled up.

I grabbed the pizza from Bulldog pizza near the meeting time for the Coroners meeting. I went to the Coroners office and saw Kris from District Court. We chatted for a few minutes. She asked how I like life and about my job. Pete arrived and I went inside just ahead of him and set the pizza in the office. I got some plates out and he asked where Patti was. Finally he called her house and found out she thought the meeting was on Saturday. So Pete and I met and ate pizza.

We talked about a few cases. I asked Pete his advice about my ankle and the pain I still get from it. He said I should go see Pennington about it.

After the meeting I went to the fire station. Carl was working with Dan to redo the computer. I hung out there for a few hours hoping that we would get a card game going. It turned out there was no game. I was planning on heading home and going to bed because I was getting tired.

Ryan called and said Haymon was in town. I knew he was coming, but I did not expect him until Sunday. He got in early. He said I should meet up with them. At first I was not going to go, then I decided to go. As I was heading to Pullman I remembered about the After-Party Nic was throwing. I was thinking about going there too.

I arrived at Rico's. I saw Neil outside. I followed him inside but he was too far ahead of me. He went upstairs. Then into the bathroom. I thought at first they may have all been playing pool. So I sat outside the bathroom waiting for him. Haymon walked up the stairs then saw me. He got really big eyes and smiled big. He came over and said hello and gave me a handshake and a hug. After he went to the bathroom I followed him down stairs.

Haymon, Moe and a guy chat

I sat at a table with Ryan, Moe, Haymon, Neil, and a few other people for a while. Haymon was going to get a round a beer and asked if I wanted anything. I said a water. Then he gave me a look. So I said I would have a Coors Light. I drank that down and people were getting ready to head out. Our plan was to get someone from another bar and go play cards. The game would be Killer Uno. We were also going to get some beer from the store. Once outside of Rico's I had them line-up for a photo-op.

We left to meet at the Coug. I went inside first. The others had not arrived yet. So I got a glass of beer and walked away from the crowd. I got bumped in the process and spilled beer all over my shirt. The I worked on drinking it while the other arrived. Ryan and I went outside. The Coug is a big-time Greek bar. It is all sorts of better-than-thou people that hang out there.

After one person was missing inside, Haymon, was a one-man search party to find the person. We got her and then headed to Shakers where the person we were looking for was located. We walked to Shakers, another Greek bar. When we went inside and I told Ryan to keep up with the others. He failed in doing so and we lost them through the crowd. Finally we made our way downstairs. They walked out to the dance floor. I did not want to push my way through the crowd so I waited near the stairs and the pool table. I saw Pete from WSU Fire there. He said hello to me. Ryan went to look for the others. He located them around the corner and they found the guy, Lars, that they were looking for.

While Ryan was gone I saw Jory from the softball team. He said hello and then asked if I was married. I told him I wasn't. He said "great, let's go pick up some chicks." I laughed and he did too. Then I told Jory I needed to go meet up with my group of people. It was near closing time. Moe gave me half of his rum and Coke that he had. I drank that and we walked outside. I headed from my truck and they headed for the cars. We were going to go to Dissmore's before they stopped serving alcohol.

We got down there in time. They got three half-racks of beer and I got something to eat. Moe rode with me to Waller. I dropped him off at Waller. Then I parked my truck by the hospital. I walked up to Waller and they said that Haymon remember he had a hotel room we could use to drink and play cards rather than sitting around in the Waller library.

Ryan has beer... In hand!

Neil with lots of beer.

We drove to the Holiday Inn and Haymon checked into his room. We walked up there and no one really drank any beer. In fact we never opened the brand new decks of Uno cards we purchased at Dissmores. Instead we spent the next two hours telling jokes and talking about some sex stuff. One girl was talking about what men and women like in terms of sex and how it changes with age.

Ryan is getting Frisky

Haymon demonstrates how to get a promotion.

Then Neil said something about Russell being gay. I played stupid and Ryan and I kept making them feel dumb because they would show some of the "evidence" that Russell was gay and we would give an example of someone else doing that thing and asking if that person was gay as well. That went on for a while. We laughed so hard that my kidneys felt like they had been used as a punching bag for the evening. I took some pictures and videos while in the room.

We put beer around Haymon.
He woke up just as I took this pic.

Around four o'clock AM Haymon was pretty much out. The others were starting to fade. So, we all left. We walked to the cars. As Ryan was talking to me we was not watching where he was walking and bashed his knee into the hitch on my truck. I was laughing hard about that as well. It was a fun night and to think I was ready to go home at ten o'clock PM.

Family Movie Night

Ryan and I met up at lunch yesterday and ate at Basilio's. He also gave me half the money for the parking permit. I did the normal stuff at work trying to get this stuff figured out.

At five o'clock I got a pizza and went to Russell's for movie night. We were going to watch Get Real and Beautiful Thing. Several family members came over to watch them as well. Steve, a friend of Nick's also came over.

After the first movie most of the people left. Nick, Steve, and I watched the second movie. Then Steve asked how I am a conservative/Republican gay man. I started to explain my underlying beliefs and how those translate into aligning with the Republicans. I guess you could say that we are, but not always for the same reason. But the ends are the same, and the means of getting to the end I would like to see is in the pathway of the Republicans.

I can say some of the things the Republicans are doing go against my beliefs, however, the things the democrats want to do are even farther away from what I would like to see, so I have to take the one that gives me the most of what I want.

We started to watch Dr. Strangelove after that, but it was getting near two in the morning and I wanted to get home. So I gave them a ride back to Waller and went home myself.

Softball practice with Gay-Rod

After spending a fun-filled day trying to figure out how to get Dexma to respond to my computer and getting the final touches on everything, I left the day without anything working. I did get the latest changes to FootballPA completed. I have the offense indicator that will start the cursor in the correct box.

After work I went home and got my softball stuff put on. Then I headed to Auburn to pick up Mike. He seems to think I am gay for some reason. Mainly because I am playing in a gay softball league. I keep side-stepping the question. Only one person in my class from high school knows and I want to leave it that way for now. I don't think there would be real harm in him knowing, but I still don't want him to know.

So when I picked him up he said "okay... now come clean." After side-stepping the question we headed for Woodland Park. At practice Mike did really well, and he showed the coaches that he would be too highly rated to play on the team. So he would not be able to play with us.

I took him home and then I went home myself. I chatted with Ryan about the Mariners big ten to two victory and we also talked about CSI that I has missed. I did not get home until close to eleven o'clock PM. I watched the news and the Simpsons before finding my way to bed.

A new project

With the new week I now have a new project that I am working on. It is one that I spent most of the day trying to run down and figure out how the thing works. It was slow going at first as it always is when I first get going on something.

On my way home I called Mike about playing softball on the Maulers team. He asked if I was gay. Because he does not understand why I would keep playing in the league. I side-stepped the question. Only Matt from my high school friends knows I am gay, and I will leave it like that for a while.

I told him that I want to play softball and if he can find me another team I will play on it, but until then I am going to play ball with these guys. I talked him into coming out and practicing with us. I hope that he will work out.

I got home and worked on a problem with the credit cards on the Janders site. It is not taking payments like that. I am not sure why it popped up, but there was a problem with the SQL statement. There were also some other problems that related to that elsewhere. I spent a while trying to run down all the problems. Finally I was able to figure them all out. For a while I was getting mad because I could not get it working correctly.