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.

Softball in the Winter

I thought my softball stuff was put away for the winter, but there was a softball pick-up game in Seattle that I was able to play in. It was put on by a guy who plays softball in the ECSA. Several others who played also are in the ECSA. Two of the guys really caught my eye. One was an athletic guy. He play shortstop for my team. He had the couple-day facial hair growth going for himself. I would have placed him in the cute category. The other guy was a little more of my kind of guy. He was blonde hair and blue eyes. He had a nice smile and also was athletic. He wasn't over weight, but he had some bulk about him. He wore a baseball hat with a well rounded bill. He was ten-six-seven.

We played about an hour and a half of softball total. I was hitting the ball well. I had a fielding error. I let a ball go under my glove. But I had a great time.

I headed up to Bellingham to see Joe and Doug. I was also doing a ride along with Joe. I got to their place and we chatted about their house and about their cats. Then Joe and I hit the road. It was a pretty quiet night over all. I got a chance to see him do a DRE evaluation for someone suspected of being on drugs. I headed home at three in the morning.

Coming in Second Place, Twice

Because of our play yesterday we are still in the winners bracket going into play today. I went to get some food this morning, but I think I had more than I should have. My stomach was hurting. My ankle was hurting pretty bad too. Even with walking around it wasn't getting a lot better. I walked to the gas station to get some water and pop, then back to the hotel room.

We got to our game location. We won the first game meaning we only had to win two more games for the whole thing. But we ran into the semi-finals. The team was from Chicago. I was put on the bench for the game because of my ankle. I was brought it in late in the game for a pinch hit and I got a solid single, but we were not able to keep the lead. We had a one run lead going into the final game and lost it quickly.

So then we were in the losers bracket. If we won our next losers game we would face the team that just put us in the losers bracket.

I was put back in as a regular player. My ankle was feeling well. I was hitting the ball very well. We batted around in each of the first two innings. We continued to hit the ball okay and kept the lead from wire to wire.

We went to the championship game against the team from Chicago. We could not hit the ball well against them. They hit it well against us. They would get the lucky bounces on both offense and defense. We just could not keep pace and they went on to beat us. We got second place in the tournament and we got tee-shirts.

When we got home I walked to the restaurant in the hotel for dinner. The others went out on the town, but with surgery tomorrow and the need to get up early, I chose to go to bed early.

I watched The Simpsons and Family Guy while waiting to hear from Ryan about the IM's championship game. We were playing Kelly's team for the competitive league champion. It sounds like we were missing our star outfielder and we put an infielder into the outfield. I am not sure how I would have done it differently, but we ended up losing the game, but we scored around twenty runs over five innings.

So today both of my teams ended up in Second Place.

I turned off the TV and drifted off to sleep.

Final Ought-Nine Softball Tournament

I came down to San Diego to play in a softball tournament. I am playing with a group of guys I don't know. I was looking forward to just going out there and doing my thing. I am going to let me play do the talking. I started out hitting number eight. But my hitting was doing very well. I was hitting six of seven with a ROE in the first two games. Before I knew it I was batting second. I knew my hitting would speak for itself.

We started one and one in the round robin play. We were seeded in the lower-C bracket. We went out and played well. The first game we won pretty convincingly. The second bracket game of the night, our fourth overall game was a lot different.

We battled back and forth. It was close. I was hitting the ball well through the game. Before I knew it we went into extra innings. I was playing first base. In one extra inning they had no outs with two guys on and the score was tied. Our right fielder made an incredible shoe-string catch. The runners had been going and we had a chance to double them up. The throw to me was bad and it bounced on the ground past me. But the catcher got it and went to second base for a double-play. We got one more out and went into another extra inning. We had a total of three extra innings. In the final one we scored and we held them from scoring. I had the final ball hit towards me. I charged the high bouncing ball. I caught it off my chest and ran it to first for the final out and the victory.

We went to Red Robin for dinner. We were out there for a while. It was a great celebration. Our victory was big.

In the IM Championships!!!

Victor and I were going to respond to calls today. There really wasn't a lot going on. I was getting some things taken care of on the computer and around the house. I had to get my shirts folded and put away. I also had to take the motorhome to the storage place and bring the Bumblebee back. Before that got going we got a call for EMS. Victor and I went to the station but we were cancelled. So I went home and got the motorhome. I drove it to get the Bumblebee. Then I got some lunch and deposited a couple checks. I went to the worksource office but they were closed for the lunch hour.

I saw a sign while I was there. It said that you were not to leave your kids unattended in the car. I thought that it was strange such a sign was needed there, but then again... Anyway, I went to the fire station for training at one.

It was on the air cart. We pulled it out and took a look at it and the air lines that went with it. It was a short training, but it was good to go over it again.

I went home and started to think about playoffs. We had two games tonight. I also had a telephone job interview. That started at four. I got the phone call and spent about thirty minutes answering some questions. If I am good enough I will come in for another interview.

I went to the field and met up with the others from the team. People started to show up and I was getting the line up set. We had fourteen guys there. One was hurt so I didn't worry about playing him. But we needed to win so I only batted eleven. 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. They were done. We had a couple guys on with no outs. So we were poised to score some more.

Ryan and I went to Rancho Viejo for dinner. We ate and talked softball. We set the line up for the championship game on Sunday. We also talked about finances. Ryan told me he advised his bosses that we was planning on resigning in November.

With us playing in the championship game on Sunday, I will miss it. I am going to be in San Diego playing softball in a tournament down there. We are also playing Kelly's team. It was a game we have been wanting to have for a long time. Our team, defensively, is as good as his team, but hitting, we need to bring our sticks. We have a lot of pretty-good hitters. We need them to do their really good hitting on Sunday.

I got home and started to pack for my trip to San Diego. I was going to have to be out the door around eight in the morning. I wanted to wash my uniform so it was clean for the start of the tournament. I didn't get to bed until nearly midnight.

Another IM Softball Playoff Game

I got up and went in to the fire station to teach CPR to a group from Avalon. It was a great class. We had a lot of fun. It seemed like I was hitting on all cylinders. It was a lot of fun.

After the class I went to Moscow to get my vent for the motorhome. I went to the roof and worked on resealing the vent and then put the cover on it. I did that until it was close to the time to get ready for the softball game.

This evening we were playing in a softball game without Ryan. We had twelve guys there. I hit everyone. We were playing against a team that could hit. We had some of our better players there tonight. We had a four to three run lead then we let up eight runs. It was sort of deflating. Then we scored a goose egg. The next inning we held them scoreless and then scored eight of our own, including about four after two outs had been recorded.

We went into the sixth inning needing to score two runs to win. We were down by one run. We quickly got guys on base and scored one. Then Peter hit one down the line scoring the game winning run from third base. We are going to the quarter finals.

I got home and watched a new episode of NCIS with Brandon. I stayed up sort of late just lounging.

First Round IM Win

Victor and I responded on calls for a while this morning and into the afternoon. We had a couple runs.

I was excited for the softball playoffs. Tonight was the first game. I went to the Rec Center to get Bruce's eligibility form turned in and then to the field. Ryan met me there. I was pitching. We were playing very well. Our hitting was good. We scored fifteen runs, only having one inning without a single run scored.

With the first round win out of the way, Ryan came over and hung out for a while. We watched Saw IV. He left and then I realized that I was going to have to get up early to teach a CPR class.

IM Softball Week Three

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

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

Two Losses in IM's tonight

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

EVOC Slow Course

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

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

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

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

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

Potlatch Softball Tournament

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pick Up Softball Player

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

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

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

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

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

Second Place In First Annual Garden Tournament

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

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

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

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

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

First Show in Years

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fall Co-ed Season is Under Way

After the second straight night of going to bed late I woke up around ten o’clock. The big plan of the day was to go a movie with BKoe. I got the photos for the photo board at the Deuce cropped and ready to go. I took a motorcycle and drove down to the Deuce. I updated the photo board at the station and then went to station one. I met up with Heston and showed him I printouts for the possible reserve recruitment sign.

I was at station one for while talking with Heston and Brown. I let Brown know that I would not be able to be at training tonight because something going on over Moscow. He asked what I was going to be doing, but I didn’t tell him because I did not think he would understand that I want to play softball.

After I left the station I went to the bank to deposit my coroner’s check. I got ten dollars cash back. I went to the Man Shop to get my hair cut. I got my normal short haircut and I was able to get a razor shave on the back of my neck. I wish it was a standard at most barbershops but it’s not.

On the way out of the barbershop I saw Joseph from the Thunder football team. He asked me if I would be the announcer for next year’s team. I told him that I would do it. I told him that I was too busy this year to make any games.

I got ready to go see the movie with BKoe. I took my motorcycle to Safeway to get some pop and pretzels for the movie and then I drove to the theater. BKoe got to the movie theater just as I was getting there we walked in together and went into the theater. Matt and CBass were supposed to go to the movie with us but they were not able to make it.

After the movie was over I got home and got my uniform for the softball game. I headed over to Moscow and met up with the rest of the team. While at the field I could see some smoke in the distance coming from a grain bin. I watched it for a while and it did appear that there could have been a fire in the grain bin. I finally called Whitcom and talked to a dispatcher. Moscow fire was advised but they found it was actually dust from farming operations and not a fire.

The game started and I was an extra hitter but I got to play first base after the second inning. The shortstop for the other team was a ten-six-seven. I spent part of the game watching him play his position. The one thing I noticed is his throws to first always seem to loft over there. In the sixth inning he was coaching first base and grabbed a bag of Redman chew and took a plug of dip.

The final out of the sixth inning was a ball hit up the first baseline. I charged the ball and hit off my mitt but it stayed on the ground right below me. I picked up the ball and tossed it to Joe who was covering first base from pitcher and we make the out. In the seventh inning I wrote the pine. We won the game and a group of us headed to the Sports Page tavern in Pullman. I got something to read and we sat around talking sports. I left the bar around ten o’clock. I got home and started working on the speech recognition on my laptop. It seems right down to take the longer to write anything however as soon as I learn how to use speech recognition better this should really be cool.

End of the Season Finals

Today was the semi-finals and the finals for the post-season men's softball. We first had to beat Agripro to go on to play for the championship. We were hitting the ball pretty well. Our defense was pretty hot as well. But Agripro is very good at getting basehits. They have some power, but they have a high average and that is why they are dangerous.

We just did our thing and put runs on the board in most of the innings. I had a couple walks and a couple hits.

After the first victory it was time to play Coors Light. They are a very good team. They lost one game all season and it was to us. We also took them into extra innings. So they are a team we can play with as long as we play flawless defense and hit the ball well. Sound we win the first game we would have to play them a second time.

In the first game we kept them scoreless for three straight innings. But we only scored five runs. That was not enough of a lead. They soon caught up. They took a small lead on us but we had a chance and could not get the ball to fall. Then they had a three run inning after an error on what would have been the third out was made by our team. Down four runs going into the final inning we were not able to get anything going and lost the game. We held Coors Light to nine runs. We are the first team to do that all season. They average just under twenty runs a game. So we did very good.

After the game we got our second place trophy and went to My Office to have a small celebration and to thank our sponsor. I had some nachos and a beer with most of the team. We talked about next season as well as the up coming intramural season.

Co-Ed Mush Ball Tournament

Today was a second tournament in Lewiston in as many days. We were playing a mush ball tournament. Today it was co-ed. We were able to scrape a team together. It was several guys from yesterday and a couple women that we play with.

I was able to play first base all day. I liked that. I also figured out how to hit the ball yesterday and I was hitting the ball with some power and I was getting basehits.

After winning the first game we had a game break. As it turned out we had a one game break between every game. After winning the first game we lost the next two. Both games were a one run loss. So we went on to a consolation game against the team we played in the first round. The second time through we crushed them. I hit a homerun. Bill had offered anyone who got a homerun a ring-pop. I was the first one to step up and get it.

When the game was done I hurried back to Pullman to drop of Faber and then down to the county to write up my DUI that I got the other night. Jordan was there to help me. It wasn't as much paperwork as I thought it would be, but my stop was straight forward. It took more than an hour and a half to do it it all.

Mush Ball Tournament

This morning I was up after only three hours of sleep. I went to get some Five-Hour Energy and breakfast. I followed Joe down to Lewiston for our softball games. We were playing in a mush ball tournament. It is softball with a ball that you can squeeze in about a quarter inch in all directions. When you hit it off center it tends to pop-up and hit the ground and bounce. It also bounces a lot on the ground. On defense you have to catch it just right or it can bounce out of your glove.

We won the first game and then lost a couple other games along the way. I was EH in a couple games. When I looked back, all the games I was on defense we lost and the games I was EH we won. It was not because of my bad defense, but it was funny that it worked out that way.

The first two games I really struggled at the plate. I was having a hard time figuring out how to hit the ball. I switched bats and everything trying to find something that would work for me.

When the fifth game was done it looked liked we got second place. I ran off to get to Pullman for working the Indian All-Star football game at Martin Stadium. We got to the field and parked the ambulance. I met a guy who turned out to be the brother of a guy I was in the reserve fire academy with back in Ninety-Nine. He had been a cop for several years and then quit and went back to WSU for a new degree.

The game was okay, there were not a lot of big plays, but what sucked is the game was almost played totally on the opposite side of the field due to the quarters and turn overs. So we were never very close to the action.

I found out that we had actually won the tournament in Lewiston due to run-differntial. So we got t-shirts!

Two Bigs Wins

Today is Ryan's birthday. I called him up on the phone and we talked for a while. I wished him a happy birthday. He told me he got an iPhone for his birthday.

In the evening we had a couple softball games. We are in the losers bracket. We had to win both games to move on. We were playing Sports Page first. They beat us in all but one game this season. We went out and hit the ball very well. We ended up scoring twenty-two runs against the four they scored. It wasn't really ever close. We just played very well.

Then it was to play the Bomb Squad. They beat us every game this season except for the first playoff game. They beat us by one run. It was a much closer game. We did go on to win, but it was only by three runs. We played good defense in both games.

It was great to win and now we have the semi-finals next Tuesday.

Men's Playoffs Start Tonight

I decided that I would be on pager today. That pretty much means that anytime there is a call I go to the station to staff it. There are a couple call types we don't respond to when on pager, mainly low level EMS calls and fire alarms. As it turned out we had a lot of calls happen yesterday. I ended up coming down to the station six times through out the day and night. It kept me busy outside of the work I was doing for MH.

I had completed some work that I turned it, but it didn't appear to work. I knew it should be working. My boss was really worried that it wasn't working because my code was dealing with live leads for real estate. I told him that it should be working so we got a conference call. Before long we found the problem was not with my code, but it was because a certain mailbox wasn't set up correctly. Once it was fixed all was good. That was a load off.

Tonight is the first night of our softball playoffs. We were playing Bomb Squad. We have played them about four times this season and beat them each time. If we won we played again. If we lose we go to the losers bracket and don't play again on Thursday.

The game started off well and we scored three quick runs. But then we went to heck. We went four straight innings without scoring a run. Our defense was awesome. We were making the outs we had a chance to make. But the longball cost us as they scored seven of their nine runs on the long ball. We lost by one run.

When I got home I worked on my MH stuff a while longer. At around two in the morning we got a call. I went to the station. I was so tired I just went to the recliner and went to sleep.

No Softball and it Sucks

This morning Tony and I went on a transfer to Spokane just went we got off duty. It was a pretty quick trip there and back.

The rest of the day was pretty slow. There was no softball today with the season being over. I just didn't know what to do with my time. It sucks that the season is over. Before long the men's season will be over. Then we have fall co-ed and IM's. Then I will have no softball for about five months. It feels like the seasons go so much faster than they use to.

Second Place

This morning came early because I was going to work at the FD for a couple hours to cover for a test they other guys were taking for the LT position. I picked up Blake and took him to the station so he could get his truck. I worked without incident, but I was pretty tired due to being up so late the last two nights.

I went to get my cell phone switched over to my new one. It finally came back from getting fixed. The screen had started to have problems. So I got the phone switched over and I am using the new phone again. That is pretty cool.

Then it was over to Blockbuster. I am not very happy with them. There was a movie that was rented a few months back. Someone was supposed to return it for me, but it wasn't returned, as I found out. Well they just charge you for the movie and you keep it should you not return it after a certain period of time. So I had this charge on my account.

Rather than send me an invoice or anything that said I owed them money, I got a letter from a collections agency saying I owed money. I was all sorts of upset over getting this letter.

I paid for my bill and then I told the guy they need to do something other than just send bills to collections. It is hard to pay bills when you don't even know that you have one. After I paid the guy gave me a receipt to show that I paid my bill, then a second print out comes through the printer. He started to grab it saying I received a coupon for a dollar-ninety-nine rental. I was walking by him and I said "don't need it" and walked out of the store.

I think I will be going to Video Quest when I want to rent video's in the future. I am very disappointed in how Blockbuster dealt with this.

After having a good couple games on Saturday our time on the field Sunday was cancelled due to rain. The rescheduled game was made for tonight. We had a solid core of guys going out to play, but it was not to be. In the first game I started at third base, but I was in a lot of pain with my neck. It hurt to turn it. So playing a fielding position would not be that good. Eric got there and I had him take over for me at third. But we could not string the hits together like we did on Saturday.

Sports Page took the first game by a homerun in the sixth inning. They won by three. In the second game they had a couple big innings and beat us pretty good. We ended up in second place in the post-season tournament. I was disappointed by the finish. We had the ability to win it.

After the game Sheila and I spent some time talking before I went to the Sports Page to chat with Jessie.

Rain Out

This morning I was all excited about playing softball this afternoon. I went to the field early because I figured that I would be needed to help keep score. If not, then I would just kick back and watch some softball action.

I was correct. They needed my assistance in keeping score. I was doing the scorekeeping for several games in a row. As it was getting close to my game time the clouds were moving in. Before I knew it, it was lightning out with some rain. We were going to give it thirty minutes to see if the rain and lightning would let up. After thirty minutes it was looking good, but the manager got a call from the supervisor of parks and rec. He was told to cancel the game. Within about thirty more minutes the game would have been playable. That really sucked. But I got a t-shirt for doing the scorekeeping, and we still have the chance to win the whole post-season tournament. I hope we win it so I can wear the t-shirt I got with pride. It was a Championship t-shirt.

I went home and did some stuff on the computer and watched some TV. I didn’t get to bed until around midnight because I stayed up to watch Rescue Me.

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.

Ended the Co-Ed Regular Season on a Loss

Today was a makeup game against the Zeppoz team. We have not won a game against an A-league team all season. Tonight would be no different. In co-ed I have been hitting the ball very well, but as a team we were not able to hold on against Zeppoz. It was close for a little while, but then they took a big lead and did not give it back to us. We could not find a way to pull it out against them.

Tomorrow I am going to be going back to the fire department. I will have a new captain and I think my countdown to my last full-time day is starting.

Back to Back Wins!

A little bit after I got up the tones went off for a transfer to Spokane. I called in to take it. I worked with Chelsea. In Spokane we went to Red Lobster for lunch. It was very good. We talked about my position as a reserve deputy on the way back, then we talked about the fire department and ways to make it better within the budget that we have with the city.

This evening brought on the final two softball games of the season. It didn't mean a lot in terms of standings because we are about half way down, but we wanted to beat these teams because we are a competitive team. We were playing the A-League champion who hasn't lost a game all season. We were also playing the number two team in the league.

In the first game we were playing Coors Light. They were unbeaten. We came close the first time we faced them going into extra innings. This time we put nine runs in the first inning and lead the whole way. We let them get back into the game, but we kept the lead the whole time and the time limit of the game hit in the bottom of the sixth inning with us up to bat. I had three balls pitched to me when the umpire called the time limit.

In the next game we were playing the number two team. We took a big lead but let the other team work their way back into it. But we were home. We had given up the lead in the top of the seventh inning. We were down by three runs. We scored a couple runs. Then with the bases loaded Jered hit a double scoring two more runs for the win.

After the game Brady broke out a couple beers to celebrate our win. Brady, Cole, Faber, and I shared the beer.

Melcher, Jessie, Faber, and I went to My Office. We shared a couple pitcher of beer. Then we went to Sports Page to hang out until a little after one in the morning. It was a good end to the season.

I was thinking that I would be going to McCoy's team next season, but I am not sure if he is still interested in adding me. I will see in the off-season. If he wants me I think I will go, I am tired of running the team with guys that seem to be undercutting me all the time. I just want to go and play. Plus McCoy is good about getting his team into the tournaments.

Lost a Must-Win Game

This evening we were playing against Sports Page. We needed to win both of the remaining games against them. Plus we needed them to lose one other game for us to take second place. But that was not to be. We had a hitting battle back and forth. But in one inning they broke out and and scored twelve runs. That effectively sank us. We tried to come back, but we were just unable to do it.

I also had Sheila come and watch. I wasn't able to show her my skills very well. I had one very nice solid hit. Two other hits were pretty lames infield grounders.

After the game was done I went to the fire station. We got a call around one in the morning. It turned into a nothing call. We cleared right after getting there pretty much.

Ankle is Really Hurting

The pain of my ankle has been going on all day today. Normally with some walking around the pain will subside and get to the point where it is not very noticeable, not today however. It was really bad when I went to Moscow to get some mitt conditioner. All the walking I did there did not loosen anything.

When I got to the city playfields for the game I was still a hurting unit. I ended up having to play first base because I had no ability to run. I have two triples that I only got doubles due to not being able to run full out. This is the worst my ankle has been in many years.

The game was pretty ugly. I was thinking we could do something in the first inning when we scored several runs, but that production did not keep up. We ended up losing the game against Sports Page. We were out matched.

When we were done playing I went to Cougar Country for some dinner. I went home and watched some TV for a while as I sat around in pain. It sucked. I actually was using my softball bat as a cane to move around with less pain.

Othello Softball Tournament

This morning I was up and ready to go around six thirty in the morning to have a nice day of softball. I went to Jessie's house to pick her up on the way to Othello. I was playing softball with the Sports Page team. We pulled into Othello around nine o'clock in the morning. I had an idea where the field was and then in the direction I thought I needed to go. I ran into the field and found Erik and Faber as soon as I got there. I parked next to their rig and walked over to the camp that was set up.

I grabbed a chair and my softball stuff. We sat around just talking about the night before. As it was getting closer to ten o'clock we made our way to the first field of play. This was a five game round-robin tournament with the top two teams going to a championship game.

In the first game I wasn't hitting nor seeing the ball too well. We are playing in a USSSA tournament. So the count was one and one. I am not a big fan of that count because I can't watch a ball and get into a rhythm with the pitches. But the rest of the team played well enough for us to win the game.

After the first game we had some time before the next game. We went back to our camping site and grilled up some hamburgers and had some beverages. I was just trying to stay in the shade.

We made our way to the field for the second game about twenty minutes early to warm up. I was playing catcher for the whole tournament. So I didn't need to throw the ball too much. My arm is pretty loose because I throw a lot during a game.

In the second game I was starting to hit the ball better and watch it better. I was able to draw a walk and got a good solid hit. We won the second game with a come-from-behind victory. It was pretty close, but we were down a couple runs. Then our sticks all came together in one inning. We took a small lead.

The defense was playing nearly perfect. We were making all the plays and making the outs we needed to make. We were not missing the cut-offs and kept the other team from advancing on us a lot.

Directly following that game we were supposed to play a second game, but we flew through our game, playing seven innings in about thirty-five minutes. There were several one-two-three innings on both side. During one of the early inning Chris, who was playing second base for us, got into a rundown as a runner. When he slid back into the base his thumb got dislocated. He was in a lot of pain. It got back into place and he kept playing. He was having a hard time gripping the bat, and as the day went on I think it was getting worse for him because he was able to hit the ball better earlier in the night.

We had to wait a little while for our third game. We hung out at the field that we had just completed our previous game on. In the third game we were playing against a "rec" team so they got a three-run lead at the start of the game. The were a bunch of younger guys, all of them looked like they got out of high school recently and all had playing baseball for their high school.

They were not very good at softball. They were not bad either, just not that good. They scored one run in the first inning, but with the three-run lead given to them they were up four to nothing. We went out and tied up the game in our half of the inning. I am seeing the ball a lot better and I am hitting it better.

We took a bit more of a lead, but our defense was still playing incredible. We held on to the lead thanks to great plays and our infield turning double plays. After that victory we had the fourth game. We were playing against a team that has lost to everyone.

We had to spot them three runs as well. But they were really a bad team. They had a couple good players, but it did not make up for the bad ones. We took a quick lead on them and didn't give it up. It looked more like a couple larger families put together a team. There were people in the forties and kids as young as fourteen on the team. We beat them soundly.

We had about an hour break. We went back out to our camp site and sat around. By now people were getting a little tired. People were moderating their alcohol intake very well so we were not getting players who were playing poorly. That was an important key.

Before the next game we made our way to the field. The team we were going to play was waiting around and a couple of their players were playing in a co-ed game. The field we were going to use was filled, so our game was moved to an empty field. We were given the option whether we wanted to play the game or not. We were already in the championship game, so this was just for fun.

We decided we wanted to play. The other team took it to us. We had some poor defense. We didn't hit the ball very well. We actually played really bad. They also hit the ball very well. We ended up losing the game. They were supposedly a "rec" team, but they didn't seem like it. They played very well.

After that loss we had a break for the homerun derby. We were going to play Venom in the championship. We beat them this morning already. The homerun derby featured about half of the Venom team. That was something I was thinking about. For an "E" team that is allowed only one homerun, they sure have a lot of sluggers.

When the game started the sun had pretty much gone down and the ball which had been pretty squishy was starting to get more firm. The team they put out the second time seemed like a different team from the first one. It seems like they picked up a couple crushers. It was a really close game. We were not scoring nor hitting great, but we were playing defense well enough to keep the game close.

But they had a break out inning scoring around eight or nine runs. That game them a lead we couldn't overcome. I had a couple strong hits in the game. We lost the game and came in second place for the tournament.

Over all the day was so much fun. An afternoon of six softball games is a lot of fun to me. I love playing and to get a chance to play so much is great fun. I was hitting the ball well and seeing the ball well. I was able to obtain a couple walks along the way.

After the game I went to dinner with Brandon and his girlfriend as well as Jessie. The whole team ended up coming with us to dinner. We went to a little Mexican place near the fields where we played softball.

When dinner was done I got some pop and headed home. Jessie was telling me about her and Ben. She gave me the whole story. We listened to some music along the way as well.

I dropped her off in Albion. Then I went to my place. I was getting the photos from the tournament downloaded from my camera when the second alarm tones came out. It was for a transfer to Spokane. I was going to do it, then I decided not to. I was going to wait about five minutes before calling in. Finally when I did call in I found I was the only caller.

I was told that I would get a call back to let me know if I was going or not. After about ten minutes I had not heard anything. Then the second alarm tones went off again. It said "FF Scotty Anderson landline station One". I picked up my phone and found it was frozen. So I got that resolved and found I was getting the transfer.

We went to the hospital and picked up the patient. We headed for Spokane. It was pretty uneventful. After dropping off the patient we went to breakfast at Perkins and then headed back to Pullman.

By now I was getting tired. I tried to talk to Blake to keep me going. We talked about several political issues. When we got back to Pullman we went to the hospital to drop off some equipment. I cleaned the back of the ambulance. Then we got back to the station. I was ready to go home. I completed what I needed to get done and headed home. I found my bed to be very nice. I turned off my pager, cell phone, scanner, and radio. I wanted nothing to wake me up.

Win One and Lose One

Today at the fire department we did a walk through of the new bio-sci building on campus. We saw the fire protection devices through out the building. We didn't have a lot of call activities during the day.

I had a couple softball games this evening. The first game went well. We took a lead and never lost it. We went on to twelve run the other team. But in the second game they beat us. We really needed to win the game to have a chance to take second place.

In the game I hit a ball that went to the second baseman. He let it get by him into shallow center field. I kept going to second base and when I got there I saw he was still getting to the ball and no one was at third I kept trucking to third. I slid in under the tag. That was fun.

Later I made an out at home. I also was part of a double play where the left fielder caught a ball and went home. I got it and made a perfect throw to third for a double play. It was great.

Jersey Night Ought-Nine

Today is the last scheduled Thursday softball game. With the re-alignment of the league we lost the rest of our Thursday night games and pretty much only play on Tuesdays. We played the Whammers. I thought it was going to be close, but it wasn't. We pretty much controlled the whole game and won it. We have been on a nice win streak.

After the game I hung around the fields to watch Sports Page play. They have several guys who I know on the team and it was Jersey Night. Joe is the leader of it and I was going to be participating in it again. I have gone to almost every Jersey Night since its inception a couple years back when Joe was with My Office still.

We started by going to Sports Page. Things were pretty tame there. Then it was off to My Office. I got myself some dinner. I wasn't drinking tonight because I was the on-call coroner. We went to Thai Ginger following My Office.

Then we loaded up in Jessie's truck and my rig and headed up to Val Halla. While there I was talking to a guy named Chris. He plays with Sports Page now, but use to play on Palouse Tavern. He said that Kelly wanted to put him on our team, but I wouldn't allow it. So now he does what he can to get me out every time he can. He also said that I never wave at him when I see him and he only lives a couple houses away from me.

I finally understood why he never seemed to like me. I don't remember the situation where Kelly wanted him on the team. I think that Kelly made up the story so he had a "reason" why Chris couldn't play with us. I am not sure what happened. But Chris had a chip on his shoulder. I tried to let him know I don't remember it happening that way. But now that I know what the problem is, it is in the open.

We moved on to Mike's bar at the end of the night. By the time we got there several people were really drunk. We started to break up there. Some people went along on their own. I had Hanna and Ryan with me. I took them to their car downtown. I also took Chris home. He thanked me for the ride. I think that we might be good now.

Firefighter Stand Down

Today was the firefighter stand down on B-Shift. But as we were doing our morning workout we got called out an EMS call. So that didn't last too long. When we got back to the station we did some classroom lecture on safety and health.

Then we had a long lunch. Bob and I went to Safeway to get stuff for dinner. We were having lunch when a call came in for the North ambulance. It wasn't long before that where we were called out. Then shortly after that a third call came in.

The afternoon was also some more safety and health lecture. At five o'clock I went to the city playfields for my softball game and batting practice. I hit the ball around in hopes of working out of my nasty hitting slump. I haven't been hitting the ball very well in the men's league.

We played Bomb Squad. I was one for two with a walk. My hit was a double and it was hit well. We won the game and I headed back to the station.

We didn't have any more calls for the rest of the evening. We watched Rescue Me as a crew. The episode was really funny.

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.

Still on the Winning Track

After a start that caused us frustration. We were not playing to our full ability. We won several games in the pre-season only to lose the first couple in regular season. We have now won the last two games and we are still within striking distance from the top of the stack. I don't expect to be first place as the team that is there would have to lose four games. They rarely lose one game in a season. I hope that we will beat them in our next game. We have the ability to do it.

The game was in Moscow. I picked up the jersey's and spent part of the day looking for people to come and play softball as four of our guys were not going to be there. This is turning into such a pain. Always having to find people. I really am done doing the managing.

We had a sea-saw battle with the other team. We were going back and forth with them passing the lead back and forth. It turned out that we took the lead in the fifth inning and never game it back.

After the game I watched Jake do some umping on the next field. I thought about wanting to ump. But as I sat there watching I started to think about why I didn't want to do umping. But as I sit here writing this I think that I would want to ump. I cannot make up my mind.

When I got to Pullman I picked up my motorhome and got it leveled in front of the house. It needs to get ready to go on the trip to Central Ferry this weekend.

One Star Day

I started the morning off by going on a call shortly after the work day started. We had to have a police officer accompany us to the hospital in the back of the ambulance. He joked with me about my driving. When we got to the hospital I stopped. Put the ambulance in neutral and then looked down to grab a pair of gloves. Chia said "We're moving". I hit the brakes, but we hit the curb with the front tire and went up on it. I felt so embarrassed and like total crap.

In the hospital I got some ribbing over it. But was killed me was the was going to be written up. Not necessarily a punishment thing, but to document it. I really started to feel down. I don't want something like that in my file. I don't know if that is where it will go, but I just don't see anything good coming out of them.

The rest of the day I really didn't want to be around anyone. I did the work I needed to do and then hid away in my bedroom. I had some softball games tonight but I didn't really feel like going to start with.

I ended up going and it was a good thing because we were playing short handed as it was. I was going to have to pitch. It was not a good start. I was pitching as bad as I did when I tried to pitch a couple weeks ago. But I fought through it and started to get my ability and confidence back. By the second game I felt like I had command of my pitching.

The first game I started to come out of my bad feeling. By the second game I was feeling better. I was hitting the ball well. We won the first game by a run after being down by a lot. The second game we lost by a run, but we had a good come back. It wasn't a bad day on the field overall.

Then I went back to the station. I was starting to get my bad feeling back. After I got changed I was in my bedroom when a knock on the door came. It was the captain. It was time to write up what had happened. I sat in his office as he talked to me. Then he gave me a form I had to fill out. That really sucked.

After I got it done I went back to the bedroom. I needed the day over with.

Eleven of Me on Facebook

I posted my photos from the other photoshoot on facebook. I have received a ton of comments from people about it. It has been a lot of positive feedback. Keeton asked how my mom tells us apart. That is because I posted a photo of me where I Photoshopped eleven different photos of myself into one.

Introducing Scotty

I got my softball line up completed at home and went to the field. We were playing Bomb Squad. I have been having a problem with hitting lately. I have been afraid of just hitting the ball and letting it go where it goes. I feel like I have to try to push it to right field where I am making a lot of fly outs. My goal was to hit the ball hard.

I did that and got two basehits. I hit once to right field and it was a fly out. We went on to win by one run. It was a lot closer than it seemed. They scored a lot in the last inning, but we lead them the whole game.

Big Photo Shoot

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

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

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

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

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

A 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".

I Have Qualified!

Working the fire department and dealing with the call that we did in the wee hours of the morning was tiring. I first had to give a statement to the police about what had happened. That took a little bit of time. Plus we had all the normal morning details to take care of around the station.

I went to the range for AR training. I got there as we were going over the parts of the rifle. Then we started to do some shooting from about twenty-five yards out to one-hundred yards. My ankle was hurting pretty bad so it was hard to walk around, but I did what I had to do. I first tried to qualify with the rifle. I was the first to go so I didn't know exactly how fast we had to be moving. I did well, but I went over the time limit by about fifteen seconds. So I had to do it a second time. But this time I went faster and did fine.

We also did the same course with the pistol. The only difference is some of the targets were moved a little closer. I passed that one the first time through. I hurried off from there to the City Playfields for softball.

We were playing in a softball tournament. We lost the first game when the other team took a huge lead over us. But we scored fourteen runs in the final inning and came up two runs short of tying up the game.

We had a long break before the next game. I went home and watched some TV and rested my eyes. Matt was having a BBQ at his place and I was invited. I gave Brandon a ride so he could partake in some adult beverages.

I was able to get a hamburger before going to the softball game. We played two more. I was going to go back to Matt's when it was done. But with as late as the last game went I never made it back to Matt's. Brandon walked down to meet up with me at the field.

The first game we didn't even come close. We had a fifteen run deficit after the first inning. We lost that game and went to the final game. That was one heck of a game. We lost it, but we had a lot of fun for the whole thing. Both teams were scoring and hitting the ball well. A total of sixty-two runs were scored with twelve total homeruns. I had a triple, double, then single. I wanted to go for the homerun, but I was more worried about getting a basehit because we needed to scored runs. It was more than likely the case that I would fly out and we didn't need that to happen.

A Butt Kicking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Batting Around

This evening we won our first regular season softball game facing My Office Number Two. The first game against them in the pre-season was a close game. It was our first of teh season so there was some rust. This game was way different. We were hitting up and down the line. We were playing tight defense as well. We held them scoreless for the first three innings.

It felt good to just go out there and hit the ball well and play good defense.

Softball Double-Header

This is the beginning of regular season for softball. We were going to play Coors light and Kimmel. I was hitting a little under average. I had a couple strong hits and got two doubles on the night. I guess at that rate I could break the doubles record this season. That is something I have been trying to do for a while. We played very well in the first game but didn't hit so well in the second. We dropped both games after having gone undefeated in the pre-season.

I did the write ups of the game for the My Office team website:

In the first game of the regular season My Office faced off with Coors Light. They have been the team to beat in the A-League for many years. This year will be no different. This years My Office team has great talent and hitting and has the tools needed to beat them.

In tonight's game we would go into extra innings to decide who would be the winner. With Coors Light having the final at bat, they had two runners on when a walk-off homerun was hit to ruin My Office's bit to beat Coors Light.

My Office at one time trailed by nine runs but was able to chip away at the lead scoring 4 runs in the 5th and 7 runs in the 6th inning to make it a 17 to 18 ball game at the end of the 6th inning. My Office scored 4 runs in the 7th inning but were not able to score any runs in the 8th inning stranding 2 runners on base.

This game had a lot of great offense and defense. Leading the way was Eric Barge who was 5 for 5 with 3 homeruns and 8 RBI. Ryan added in 4 hits with 1 homerun and 4 RBI. But it was not enough in the end.

And then game two:
After hitting the cover off the ball in the first game of this double-header, My Office was only able to muster 21 hits on our way to scoring 16 runs. Playing against Kimmel we were looking to pick up our first win of the regular season.

With an 0-2 start My Office is in goods company with teams of years past. We have done this before on our way to a great season. The team has the talent to score runs in a hurry. In the 3rd inning we posted 9 runs after hitting around. But that was the big inning for My Office. We had 5 other innings where we scored 1 run or less.

Kimmel hit the ball very well today. They were earning the runs they were scoring. In 4 of their 6 innings they scored at least 4 runs. Two of those innings they put across a total of 15 runs.

Ryan was one of the offensive bright spots going 4 for 4. Kelly had 3 hits 2 of which were homeruns. He pushed across 5 of the teams' runs.

Big Beating in Softball

As the day was coming towards softball playing time I was almost completely done with the big project I have been working on. I have been going through my entire music collection and updated all the ID-Three information. It has been a huge under taking. In the process I downloaded a couple applications that helped me make this project manageable. I also renamed every song that was part of the old naming method. My new naming method is a logical system.

Tonight we were playing against Bomb Squad. They have reloaded and I would say the team is not as strong as it has been in the past. It could partly be due to the fast that they are new to playing together. But they seem to have a lot of guys who all seemed to try to crush the ball. They were not hitting a lot of base hits. We the first couple innings and played close to them. Then we broke it open over the next two innings scoring a lot of runs and went on to beat them twenty to eight.

We hit the ball well. I was hitting the ball well too. Our team is very strong this year and I think we actually are good enough to beat the Coors Light team which is well known for being the strongest team in the league.

Co-Ed Double Header

This evening was our first co-ed games. It was going to be a double-header with one game against Parrish's team. We are supposed to play in the A-league this year, but the team is not as strong as last year from what I can see by who we have coming back. But really we ended up winning both games. We were not crushing the other teams. We were eeking out the wins. The teams we played were both B-League teams. If we continue to play as poorly as we did in the first two games we will end the season in third place out of three teams. I think that we have the talent. We just need to get people out there to hit well and play some good defense.

Men's Double Header

Tonight was the first of two men's summer games. We had a double header. In the first game we were not very sharp. We had throwing errors. Including one where I threw the ball into the outfield from the catcher position when I tried to go to second base. We were playing the other My Office team. We had to beat them for bragging rights. We did beat them, but by the skin of our teeth.

The second game was a lot better. We played defense better and hit the ball a lot better. We ended up beating the other team pretty easily.

Summer League Men's Softball

Tonight we had a double-header to start off the Ought-Nine Summer Men's Softball season. We were playing My Office #Two tonight. They are sponsored by the same bar that our team is. This was our first meeting with them. We also have been in a higher league than them. So we didn't want to lose to them. We wanted the bragging rights. We ended up beating them by four runs. It was a little closer than it should have been.

The second game wasn't even close. We all were hitting the ball very well and took a nice lead and beat them pretty soundly. It is part of last season's Tubbs team. They are now called Sellas/Coug.

Following the games I went back to the FD to complete my shift. I had taken some time off without pay in order to play softball.

During the day we were doing hydrants. While we were going to one of the last hydrants I saw a guy standing in the road next to a cat that was laying on the road. I thought that cat had been hit, then I was a coyote. I knew what had happened.

We went to assist the cat. It appeared that it was hurt pretty bad. It was bleeding and appeared to have difficulty breathing. We got it to the WSU vet school and they worked on the cat.

I learned later on the cat's owner had been notified. The wounds were cleaned and the cat went home. It wasn't as badly hurt as we thought. That was great news.

IM Playoffs

This IM season hasn't been one of our best in the last decade or so. In fact three years ago we would not have been in the playoffs, except Intramural's changed how they do the playoffs. Now every team gets a chance to play and it is based on the record if you go to a recreational bracket or the competitive bracket. Before the change only about sixteen teams signed up to play comp and everyone else did rec. But that wasn't very good, because a lot of competitive teams would sandbag.

Now everyone is all in the same league. Then based on the record they break the playoffs down. We were only one and five on the season, so we are in the rec bracket.

Tonight our big hitter was not there so we were going to have to do it ourselves. The first game the other team did not even show up, so we got a first round FFT. That gave us a second game. In the second game we were going to be down a player so I called up Heston. He came to play with us. We had ten guys and we hit the ball well enough to score eighteen runs. It was our biggest output of runs on the season and we won the game.

We will play again on Sunday.

Opening of the Ought-Nine Softball Season

This afternoon I spent some time on a telephone conference meeting. We were discussing some of the new code that I will be in charge of and what I am going to need in order to get my computer set up for the dev environment.

Tonight was the opening of softball season. Ryan was coming down from Spokane. I started to make sure my equipment was all together and ready to go. I got my cleats traded out with some new plastic ones. The old ones had rubbed way down. I made sure my uniform was all together and then I started to change into my uniform.

I got the score sheets, the schedule, and drove to the field. I walked down to the field we were first going to play on. I had three new players who were going to meet up with me there.

Our first wasn't the greatest. We scored two runs per inning as they were. Then one inning we only scored one. But in the final inning we took a nice one run lead. But we were not able to hold on to it and lost in the bottom half of the inning. That did suck as they had their bottom three batters coming to the plate. The first two got out quickly. Plus they only had nine fielders.

The second game was worse. The team was good and crushing the ball and our outfield struggled to make all the outs that we were able to make. We had one guy with no cleats. He did some good slipping and sliding.

We ended up losing both games. Ryan and I went to my place and talked about life in general. We were going to go see the Fast and Furious around ten o'clock.

We headed to the theatre around nine-thirty. We got to our seats and the movie previews started within a minute of us walking in. The movie was good. It was great to see Paul Walker on the screen. He is looking great still.

Long Tiring Day

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

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

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

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

I am Back with My Office

I decided it was time to wash my Durango. It was pretty cold outside, causing some ice to form on the driveway, but it needed to be done. It was sort of a quick wash job because I was going to going to lunch with KStew.

BKoe came along with me to Quiznos. We met up with Kelly. Weese also showed up. We had some lunch and started to talk softball. It looks like I will be back to the My Office team this year. I don't want to leave this season. With the uncertainty coming up and the fact that I don't want to leave my guys high and dry I decided to put it back together. Without me Nick was going to pick it up, but some of my guys would be left out. I didn't want that to happen.

I am going to chat with Greg about this development. I am going to let him know that I am going to make myself available for tournaments so he can see how I will work out with everyone and if he likes me I will move to his team next summer permanently. But I think that will be for the best in the long run. Plus I will make it known to my guys that I will be leaving so they may want to think about finding another team or see about taking over the My Office team.

Pretty Tired

This morning the only task we were assigned was to do some building inspections. But we had some calls happen. It started out with a call towards Palouse. But that was cancelled. So we came back and started to do some inspections. We got a couple knocked out, but before we started the third we got another call. So we ran off to campus where the call was.

Later in the evening I got a call from KStew about softball for this coming summer. He said he wants to get together and remain on a team together. But there was confusion about my status. That was the last piece of the puzzle. Now that KStew is planning on coming back I know what my team will be all about. So now I have a decision to make.

I went to bed sort of early because I was tired. About thirty minutes after I went to bed there was a loud bang. It was the guys playing some more jokes on everyone. I didn't get up because I didn't want to give them the satisfaction. I think that depending on the results they get from me the more or less I will get it from them.

It really didn't bother me so much. I could hear them down the hall giggling and doing the same thing to the others guys as well.

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.

Boringly Normal

This morning I was a little slow moving around, the after effect of the tequila was hitting me a bit. No headaches, but I just felt a little off. I had an appointment with the psychologist for the SO. I was going to get my results back and he was going to speak with me about any questions he had. If I pass this I will be good to go for completing the academy.

While in with the doctor I was being questions about some of the things that I wrote on my background packet. It was a packet that asked tons of questions about my history, my family, my upbringing, sexual history and more. I wrote that I chose not to enter the sexual questions. Something about putting some of that information on paper did not appeal to me. He said that was quite alright I did that. He didn't asked anything more about that.

He then pulled out my test results. He pointed at one line. He said that all my points should be below it. Then it pointed at a second line and said that anything above it is reason for worry. I was not above any of the lines. He said my results show that I am "Boringly Normal". He said coming from a psychologist that is a compliment. He congratulated me and said I should do just fine being a cop.

Today is the final game of the Ought-Eight softball season for me. The season started back on March Thirtieth. It snowed and I was having troubles hitting the ball. Tonight I hit a triple in my first at-bat. I had two at bats tonight and two hits. It was good. I walked off the field and tipped my hat to the rest of the team and thanked them for a good time. We ended up winning the game.

After the game most of the people on the co-ed team went to the Garden for some drinks. I opted to not drink, but I did drink water. I told BKoe that I was having Blue Dolphins. Which is a fancy way of saying water.

We were at the Garden for a couple hours talking softball and having a good time hanging out. By this time I was actually feeling good with no more effects of my tequila night.

Knocked Out of the Playoffs

In this evenings softball game we gave the other team a lead, but then we came back and too the lead, only to give up seven runs in the last inning to lose the game. It really sucked.

During the game I was on third base. There was someone on first. A grounder was hit to the middle infield. I started to go down the line. I got near the commitment line thinking that it was going to be a double play, but it wasn't. The ball was thrown to the catcher. He stepped on the plate, but I was safe. So I waited by the line he ran towards me. As soon as he got to me I stepped over the line. I was called safe right away. The umpire made the correct call. The other team was confused by the play. The umpire explained it to them. Some of the guys on my team knew what I was doing because I explained it to them, but some others didn't. They thought it was funny when it was all said and done.

As we went to take the field following that inning I heard one of the guys on the other team say "the old man is crafty." Ryan said I should bean their batter for that comment!

After the game I went to Cougar Country with the rest of the team. We got dinner and voted for team awards. We also had some fun talking about the season and looking forward to the upcoming season.

Ice Cold Softball

This afternoon we had the Palousitics lunch at Pete's Bar and Grill. Joe let us in to his place and opened it just for us. Normally he is not open for lunches. The food was good and it was nice to have the place to ourselves.

After lunch I got side tracked. I was going to work on winterizing my motorhome but I didn't get it done during the daylight hours.

I went to the Valley Road Playfields to meet up with Ryan and the rest of the team. We had our first playoff game. We were playing against a team we already played and beat up on. But they had a different look to the team. We started off in a hole with a five run deficit. They had several players who kept hitting up the middle. I moved Jordan to play a fifth infield position when they would come up and it started to take away their hits.

In my final at bat I was looking at a pitch that was a little high. I swung at it and the ball was going right down the right-field line. I was expecting it to curve foul. But as it crossed over first base it was still fair. I thought I should drop my bat and run, but I was frozen there watching it. Soon it was getting near the fence. The ball was still going straight. Soon it went over the fence about two feet fair. It was a homerun. That felt great. We ended up winning the game and moving on in the playoffs.

Bruce and I went to Moscow to start the playoffs for our Co-ed team. There was frost on the grass in the outfield and the thermometer in Bruce's vehicle said it was freezing. It surely was cold. We were playing against the team that last beat us in the regular season.

We went out hitting the ball well and then went cold, but started to get hits when it mattered and went on to win the game. We are a good team over all. We already have a tee-shirt for winning the league. I hope we earn one for winning the tournament as well.

When I got home I went to my motorhome and worked on draining all the water out it.

League Champs

This morning I did my weigh in, I was down about seven pounds from last week. I had only lost one pound the previous week. I am under two-sixty for the first time in a very long time! I can't wait until I am under two-fifty. It is very exciting. It is like when I got under three hundred for the first time. This is one of those little mile stones I didn't really have in mind, but it felt so good when I saw it.

This evening we had softball. We were playing for the league championship. This is a make up game for the rain out from last week. It is lucky for me because I ended up working when the last game was supposed to be played, but because of the rain out it was moved to tonight.

I have been hitting the ball very well in this league, just as I have been hitting very well in the intramural league as well. I guess last IM season I was just rusty. It was the opening part of the season.

We went on to win the game with a come from behind win. It was very exciting and we are the league champs!

Brandon came out to the game with me and then we went to Apple Bees after the game. From there we went home and played some games before I had to get to bed.

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.

Co-ed Softball Defeat

Tonight was supposed to be our last co-ed softball game, however, with Monday's cancellation we will have one sometime next week I suppose.

I got over to the field and started to warm up. I was going to play first base today. I am happy to not be a EH only. But I am just happy to be playing softball and enjoy my time out there.

Since the begining of the softball for the ought-eight year I have really come around with my hitting. Early on I couldn't hit the ball very well. I was missing it and just not getting good contact.

Now I am hitting the ball with some power. I am starting to go to the left side a little bit more. I have to build my confidence to keep pulling the ball. But I am also going to right field most of the time. I am now getting some powerful hits as well as hard liners.

The game tonight was a close one, but we were not able to pull it out in the end. It was too bad. Now we must win the last game to win the whole thing.

Bad Turn at Two

This morning I was woken up with an EMS call outside of the city. By the time I was done working the call it was time to go home. I went off to the Rec Center to do some cardio. I have a test coming up on Saturday. With the looks of the way I am going right now I am afraid I will not be able to pass the test.

But as I have said before if it is meant to be it will happen. There is a chance it is not meant to be right now do to any number of reasons. It will not be clear right away, but if I don't get it I have no doubt at some point in the future it will have been for the best.

I went to my softball game this evening. We played in Moscow. I ended up playing at second base. In the second inning there was a play that I tried to turn. But I didn't square up my body and I threw very wide of first. About ten feet wide and I almost actually beaned the runner with the ball. Hitting-wise I only had a triple to the fence. I didn't hit well besides that.

After the game Warren, Jesse, and I went to My Office. We had some chips and drinks. While there the "hottest guy in Pullman", as Russell would say, walked in the bar. He sat a couple tables from us. Russell and I have been seeing him around Pullman for several years, I would have to think he is a Senior this year. This is the first time this year I have seen him.

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.

Lunch with a Commissioner

This morning I was fasting for a blood draw that was taking place this morning for my annual physical. I went to the Palouse Medical office for the blood draw. Following the blood draw I went home and had breakfast.

I went to the rec center to lift weights. But due to my hurt back I was being cautious of doing anything that would further hurt the back. I was able to get most of my work out done but there was some pain involved so I backed off when that happened.

When I got home I cleaned out the truck floor and vacuumed it. I was going to be picking up Tom to go to lunch at the Hilltop Restaurant. We were meeting with Jerry Finch a County Commissioner. We had a nice lunch with him talking about some of the political issues that are currently coming along as well as his pending re-election. I got a yard sign from him to put up next to my Rossi sign.

I had to go back to the doctors office after lunch for the rest of my physical. My eyes were good. My blood work came back good as well. I was a little worried about being overweight for years if that would have caused some problems. But it hasn't... yet. With any hope my Body for Life work will make it so nothing does happen. The physical went well.

I had softball this evening in Moscow. I had been taking some pain pills through out the day in order to deal with the pain a little better. I went to the softball field and did what I could to hide the pain. I wasn't able to make normal throws, but I was still able to throw the ball well. I did fine fielding the ball. My hard part was batting and then running with any great speed. But I did what I could.

We went out and took a fourteen run lead. But as the game went on we stopped hitting and the other team hit the ball well. They took over the lead. It was a battle, but they finally beat us twenty-six to twenty-five.

Ouch! There Goes the Back

I did my cardio today at the rec center. I failed the mile and a half yet again. But I was pretty close all the same. I need to have water with me for it so when my mouth gets some cotton mouth going on I can swig some water.

Afterwards I shot hoops waiting until I could sign up my team for softball. I have found out that I am hurting as far as players go. I am hitting the free agent market looking for some players to pick up. I have found three so far. With one more I am on the fence about. The problem is that he is an first baseman and I am not sure we need one of those.

I was taking some laundry down stairs and I felt my back go out. I felt the pain start to get worse and worse. Sure enough I sent it into a spasm. So now I am hosed for the next couple days. The problem is that I have things I need to do over the next couple days. This really sucks.

I had HazMat training tonight. I was about ready to go when I saw an e-mail about a problem with the events calendar. The e-mails are not getting sent to Heston. So I looked into it and found it was a problem I created when I was testing the system after adding in new functionality. I was able to get that fixed.

HazMat training was pretty brief tonight. People noticed my walking and knew I was hurting, but I denied it. They knew though.

The hurting back is probably going to cause me a bit of a slow down on this current Body for Life run.

Twelve More Weeks

Today is the start of a new Body For Life workout period. For the next twelve weeks I will be working hard on eating six good meals, working out six times a week, and losing weight. If the past is any indication I am expecting to lose about ten pounds per month. So I hope to be down another thirty pounds in the next couple
weeks.

My workout today was upper body. I am supposed to do one on Friday as well, but I may have to postpone it due to the activities I am going to have to do on the marine patrol on Saturday. I don't want my arms to be tired. I think I am going to need to use them on Saturday.

I got home and washed my car. It was in need of it, especially the front wheels. They were really dirty with brake dust. I got it all cleaned and I also charged the battery in the Bumblebee. I plan on driving around the Bumblebee for a while and letting the Durango sit in the garage.

I found out there was a co-ed game tonight in Moscow. I went to play in it. I was batting lead off and playing first base. I got on and scored in each at bat. I also lead off every inning in the game. We only played four and a half innings because we crushed the other team. On defense I had a nice scoop along the way. It was a fun game.

National Tournament Day Two

We are no in do or die waters. We had ten people today, but I haven't seen two of the guys play for ages. As it turned out they were rusty. But the rest of the team didn't do very well either at the plate. We didn't hit the ball at all. We scored a little in the first inning, but the inning was ended when Chad hit a homerun with no outs. Matt and Mike both packed on the pounds since leaving WSU. Mike was rusty out there as well. But it was good to see both of them.

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.

I went to Ron's hotel room for a while I shared a couple beers with him as we talked softball and then sports in general. I was there for a couple hours before heading to Jon's to had a BBQ with them. I played around with some of the boys waiting until it was time to go see Dave.

Dave and I were going to watch Batman tonight. Dave had not seen it. He wanted to go the night before, but the movie was already starting.

We met at Southcenter and he complimented me on how much I have lost. He hadn't seen me in a while. After the movie we went to Shari's for some dinner and we spent time talking and getting caught up with each other.

National Tournament Day One

I got up early and working on finding one more person to play softball with us. I was still hurting after finding out that one of the people I was counting on would not be there. I only had eight confirmed. So I made calls and texts to lot of people. Most of the people were planning on going to the Cougar game. I called Jim and he said he would play. He saved my bacon. I texted Jon and wrote "Jim is my Huckleberry".

I bought a tee-shirt for the tournament and waited for people to show up worried about everything. As people were showing up I had them sign the roster. I was worried about everyone showing up. We had no room for anyone to be missing. As the game started we were going to have to take an out for every time through the line up. It sucked. To top it off Ron got hurt in the second inning. That really caused us some trouble. We didn't score any runs.

Later Brandon and I went to see Batman. I was told I need to see it in the theatre. We decided to meet at the Southcenter theatre. It is the first time I was there since they remodeled the whole mall. It is pretty incredible the difference in the look.

After the movie we stayed and talked for a while about work and whatnot.

Learning to Forge

While at work this morning I was working hard to get the roster completed. But due to the number of pick ups we would need I had to get one of them on the roster from the city of Moscow. So I needed to work a while doing photo copies several times in figuring out how to get the original photocopy which was signed to include one more name. So a photocopy of the original signature would not work. I needed to use the sheet with the photocopy. But I couldn't just write in the name because it would be obvious that we had written in the name after the photocopy. So I had to write in the name and information on a blank sheet. And then photocopy that one line onto the form that was already filled out, but to get the right kind of ink so the photocopy would look like the other ones was a challenge, and then working to make sure it lined up was very difficult. When it was all said and done the time was wasted because they never even looked at my roster.

I went to Federal Way for the managers meetings. That is where we were drawing for game times. We also got information about the rules. The Hooter's girls were there with wings and other food items for us. I sat next to McCoy. He was telling me that they were thinking about asking me to play on their team at the beginning of last season, but didn't because they found out I had the My Office team. But he made it sound that if I ever want to change teams I would have a place on his.

Following the meeting I went to Seahawks Stadium for the game. It was Oakland that was in town. We went to the events center to start off. Justin was with us and he went through some of the things they had set up for the kids to do.

Once it was closer to game time we made our way to the seats. The Seahawks played pretty well and beat up on Oakland pretty good. We left a little early because I parked in the parking garage. It takes about an hour to get out of it once the game is done and we needed to be at the poker game.

At the poker game I was not playing it very well. I had a decent hand and went up against a girl who only played the nuts pretty much. I didn't know that to start with. So I was dominated as I was throwing a bunch of money into the pat. That hurt. I never really recovered. I lost about sixty bucks through out the night. I just was not seeing any cards.

Rush to do the Paperwork

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

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

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

Lentil Festival Champions

Today I am playing in the Lentil Festival Softball tournament in Pullman. Our team is one of seven in the tournament. We started out with a win, but it was close, we had to do a comeback in order to win the game. With us in the winner bracket we had a couple hours off. I walked over to Reaney Park where the fire department was operating a dunk tank. CBass was in it. I threw some balls, but I missed with all of them. It was horrible. I was in uniform and CBass was ripping on my moustache. Later on Heidi got into the dunk tank. I sank her two of the three first throws. She also set me up for a ride with her tonight.

I went back to playing softball. We kept winning the games we were playing and we went to the championship in the winner bracket. We were playing the team we beat the first game. We knew they would be tough, but we also knew they would be less rested with us because they have been playing straight through. But they still came out and beat us in the first game. But that just made them more tired. We finally went out and took care of business. But we had to go into extra innings.

We were tied at the end of seven. In the eight they took a lead and we tied it up. In the ninth they took a three run lead. We got one run. Then with the batters we had coming up we were going to need a miracle. With two on, the miracle was starting to happen, we were down by two. There were two outs. Warren came to the plate. He hit a walk-off-three-run-homerun. Everyone on the team started to cheer. It was great.

I hurried home to clean up and then down to the police station for the ride along. I went out with Heidi for several hours. It was a pretty quiet night over all for an opening weekend of school. We had a couple drunks. One guy was arrested for assault. But it was all pretty tame. It was nice to ride with Heidi though.

End of the First Shift Night

I got up with the alarm going off for a fire alarm. It was up in Thompson hall. It was the one where we had to climb and crawl in the attic to get to it. We got it reset. Just as we got back to the station we were sent back there. We checked the detector location. With no fire, we reset again and disabled that detector. As we were getting back to the station we got dispatched to another fire alarm elsewhere.

I got out there about thirty minutes late. I went home and changed to hit the rec center. I did my workout. While I was there a ten-six-seven was working out. It seemed like each place I went he was near by. It was nice scenery to work out to. What was funny is that his body didn't fit his face so much. He was very muscular, but he face looked very young.

I worked on some of the videos from softball. I am putting together a video for each person. I am placing each clip with a person together and playing music in the background for it. It is taking a while but it is fun to do.

This evening I had HazMat training. I went to the fire station for the training. We were touring campus looking at the places that hold on to hazardous materials. We were seeing the locations and how the rooms are set up in terms of safety equipment and what not.

Lost Early

I was over in Moscow for the first softball game this morning. We were playing for a spot in the Nationals for ASA. But we were flat and couldn't get a basehit. We ended up losing the game and were sent home early.

Ron, Joe, and a couple others hung out at the fields watching some of the games after ours. We were having a great time watching the games and ranking on each other. While there I told to the organizer of the tournament. He said he doesn't know of other qualifiers, but he said that if I call the person in charge of the tournament in Seattle that he may just let us in. I am going to see if I can get us in that route.

I went to Tri-State and got a folding chair and some new Levis. I needed some new jeans as my only pair are in bad shape. I got home and washed them with all the other clothes I needed to wash.

I went to the rec center and did the Cooper test again. I didn't pass it because of the run, but I did do good enough to pass all the other sections of the test.

I spent some time getting things ready for my first day of work tomorrow.

Tournament to Earn a National ASA Spot

The softball team is playing in a tournament to earn a spot to play in the Nationals in Seattle this year. We need to be one of the top three teams to earn a spot. But in the first game we came out flat after the first inning. We couldn't score runs and lost the first game. That is not where we wanted to be in the whole thing.

After the game we went to get some breakfast. I had already eaten so I just went for the ride. We got back to the field and hung out for a while. Our second game I pitched. I struggled for a couple batters then I was did really well from there on out. It was a close game, but we beat the team and went on to play another team later on. It was a weak team and we easily beat them.

While at the field one of the guys from another team that I met recently was at the fields. He is ten-six-seven. While in Bovile for the softball tournament there I saw him there shirtless. He is well built and had a nice chest. It was nice to see him again.

After the game we went to dinner in Moscow and then over to Pullman to hang out at the Sports Page. I played a couple games of pool and talked with the others who were there. We hung out there until around ten o'clock in the evening. I gave Warren a ride home before going home myself.

Bovill Day Two

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

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

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

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

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

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

Softball in Bovill

I got up early this morning to get ready to head out to Bovill for a softball tournament. I have never been there and I didn't know who I would be playing with.

I got out there around seven-thirty in the morning. I met up with Jackie and I was able to find the team I was playing with. We were playing on a field that had gravel and rocks mixed in with the dirt. There were no side fences and the backstop was the side of a little league backstop. I wasn't sure what to expect out of the tournament, but I was happily surprised.

There were a total of ten teams. My team would seem to be like a bunch of scrubs, but we were not a bad team over all. We won the first game to remain in the winners bracket. There were kegs at the field and it was free for the players.

The second game wasn't as good. We lost the game, but we ended up getting the win because the other team didn't have enough players and used some players from another team. That means we play again tomorrow morning at eight o'clock in the morning -- AGAIN! No sleeping in for me.

I came home and got some dinner. I didn't do a whole bunch around the house because I was relaxing over all. Plus I had to get up early in the morning. I guess I get to "sleep in" on Monday.

I was on call for the coroner and I heard a call get dispatched down by the river. I had a feeling I may be going down there, but I never ended up getting dispatched to it.

Final Regular Season Game

Today we were at the tower doing some more evolutions. Today it was standpipe stuff.

After work it was off to playing softball. We were playing the final game of the regular season. We were not able to win the game, but it didn't matter much we had second place locked up.

After the game several of us went to Pete's to meet up with the guys who we played against. It was Bruce and Joe's team -- Tubbs. They beat us, so we had some good banter back and forth, but we beat them two of three times so I had that to hold over their heads.

Russell is Going Away

We had more softball today. I was playing first base most of the time. We had our first game against Zeppoz. We were not getting timely hits and we were losing. I had called Kelly about playing. When he heard we needed him he came in. It was great it was the boost we needed and we went on to win the game. We were in the losers bracket and now we were going to face Sports Page in back to back games. We had to beat them twice.

We won the first game and then went on to win the second game. Ryan and Russell came down and watched the final part of the last game. We won the championship. We got the trophy and got out photo. I went to Pete's for a while with everyone, then it was off to Cougar Country.

Rhonda was happy we won the whole thing. She loved that we beat the B league team yesterday because one of her cooks was on the team and we was talking about how they were going to take us down. She put up the championship trophy and couldn't wait to show her cook.

Russell, Nick, and Ryan also came along to Cougar Country. After we ate Ryan and I went to get some cake and stuff for Russell's birthday which was coming up really soon.

Russell is leaving Pullman for good and we wanted to have a day out with Russell and we decided to celebrate his birthday as well. We were at Russell's for a couple hours eating cake and watching some video's on YouTube.

Co-Ed Post-Season Tourney

I started at pitcher and I wasn't doing great. We were playing a coed B league team that was moved up into our league. I walked several people through out the first couple innings costing us runs. Finally I got Heston to pitch and the pitching problem went away. We started to get better at the plate and we started to get walked plus we were hitting the ball well. Sooner or later we finally took a lead.

It was a tight game but we ended up pulling it out and staying in the winning ways.

After the game we went to Pete's Bar and Grill for some food and beer while waiting for our next game. But I was going to be going to the golf tournament.

I stuck around until the latest possible time I could wait until I had to go home and get ready to golf. Matt found a guy named Travis to cover for him on the team because Matt was unable to play. I called him and we planned on riding together to Colfax.

While the game was getting ready to start I got the lineup written and a couple umpired were roasting me in front of Heston and some others. I was laughing so hard. It was about my pitching. They said that Heston should never let me pitch. I took it very well.

As a joke I took the mound as the game was getting ready to start and one of the umpire who roasted me was there. I looked at him and pretended that I wasn't going to pitch because of what he said. It was pretty good.

I went to home after that to get ready. I got my golf clubs and went to Dissmore's. I got some water and picked up Travis. He is ten-six-seven. His complexion reminds me of BKoe.

When we got to Colfax he took his shirt off to switch to a different shirt. That was a treat because, as I said, he was ten-six-seven.

We finally got out on the course. I had Hansen and Pete playing with my team. We were not kicking butt, but we were holding our own. At the break we had some dinner and did the raffle. I won a couple prized including golf balls, a shirt, and a hat.

On the second round we were using the glow balls. It was harder, but I started to do better because I wasn't trying to crush the ball. Towards the end of the round Pete hit a ball and it looked like he crushed it, but we don't know where the ball went because he hit the glow stick out of the ball. Hansen did that twice as well. We were laughing so hard.

Starting On the Last Couple Shifts

Tonight was the night to beat up on another softball team. We were playing K&K again. The first couple games were close games that we won. Today it was a run away for My Office. We had no problems beating up on the other team.

After the game I was on call for the fire department. I am starting the final couple shifts as a reserve. I am sad about the end of the run of being a reserve Crew Leader. I am going to miss working with the guys and I am going to miss having a position with some responsibility.

I feel like there are things that I have not done yet, so I don't feel like I am ready to move along. But that is the way it is. I am not going to be able to stay and make the changes to the reserve program that will make it stronger.

Palousitics Lunch with Guest

Today for lunch we had our Palousitics lunch with a guest. It was the editor of the Daily News, Steve. We talked with him about the newspaper industry and about politics in the area and how the Daily News covers it.

We had a softball double-header tonight. We were playing Bomb Squad. We went on to beat them pretty easily tonight. It was the first time we beat them all season. Up until now we would not beat them for what ever reason. We took an early lead and then went on to win.

Then we played against Coor's Light. But it was the opposite story. They crushed us. We couldn't get the timely hitting, unlike we did in the first game. With that loss we are going to have to battle for second place.

The New Temp

I went to the fire station this morning to update a couple photos on the photoboard. I was asked by Wilkins if I would be there after I was done. I told him I needed to go to the rec center but I could come back later on. I had a feeling that he wanted to talk to me about the temp job.

I went to the rec center and did the LE physical agility test. I am still not there on situps. I also made the mile and a half in about the same about of time. I need to shave about one minute off that time in order to get forty points.

I came home and cleaned up. I called the station and I set up an appointment to meet with the Chiefs at three o'clock PM. In the mean time I talked with Jon a little about the upcoming decision that I have to make. I guess I am sort of in the drivers seat, because I don't need to take the position. I sort of feel like I need to take it however.

I went to the fire station and I met up with the chiefs. I was offered the temp positions. It was said that I would not be guaranteed a job due to this, but it could help if I do a good job while working as a temp. I was given some time to think about it. They said they would work with me due to my other job. I told them I couldn't give up my other job knowing that there may not be a position when this is all done because they want to change it to a paramedic position. They said they would work with me in reference to my other job.

I left and called Jon. We talked about it some more. He pointed out that this temp period is a good thing for a couple reasons. One is that if I don't work out, then I still have a job to go it. If I don't take this, and wait until a fulltime position comes open. Then I take it and don't work out, I am out two jobs. Plus with them working with me I should be able to do both for a while. I am very nervous about saying yes, but I went back to the station to take it.

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.

I got a call from Gollnick. I thought he already knew. He was calling about playing poker. I figured I would tell him in person.

I asked Heston to hold off on the e-mail until as late as he can so I can tell my guys in person. It was going to work out because everyone was coming down for rig checks early, and A. Wilcox and I had to be there to clean the bay. As I got to the station I got another call from Gollnick. He had been at the station and heard some rumors. He called me to ask me about it. I told him what was going on. I told him that I was going to tell him while playing poker. For my guys, I waited until everyone was there.

I told them that I was offered and accepted the temporary position. They congratulated me. But I am sad. The E-mail had gone out and by the end of my softball game I had a couple texts from people congratulating me.

We played against Tubbs. My head was not fully in the game as I was thinking about the change in my life. I had a good night. I pitched the whole game and didn't walk anyone on accident. One guy we walked on purpose a couple times. I also hit the ball pretty well. We won the game in the bottom of the seventh. It was great to win that one. We let up eight runs in the first, but came back to win.

After the game I went home and Gollnick came over. We played poker at my place until almost two in the morning. We spent a lot of time talking about the things I should do while I am at the fire station. What I should do on my first couple days. I had a pretty good idea having been around the fire services as long as I had been. The one I didn't know is to make sure there is coffee always ready.

I lost some money playing poker, but it could have been worse. I was only down nine bucks on the night, but at one point I was down to two bucks left.

Today is one of those days, I was expecting the offer for the temp position, but I am still not mentally prepared to leave the reserves. Though I have spent a lot of time thinking about that in the last couple months. I also realize my dreams of getting back on the sheriff's reserves will probably not be fulfilled. I am disappointed about that because I was really starting to think about how nice it would be to get that under my belt. It seems like everything went so fast.

Bremerton Tournament

After getting only one hour of sleep it was getting closer to nine o'clock AM. I started to get my uniform on and waited for the others to show up. We were planning on doing some batting practice before our first game.

We were playing in the E division instead of the D division that we originally signed up for. The competition level was closer to that of our play. The first game we won, I didn't hit great, but the rest of the team did and we went on to win by several runs. We had an hour break before our next game.

But it sucked because I was hitting better, but the team overall didn't hit well and we ended up losing that game. That put us in the losers bracket. That also meant that we would have several more games to play in order to win the whole thing. The team we played when we lost wasn't that great, but they found a way to get the hits they needed to get in order to beat us.

We had a couple hour break before our next game. Several of us went to Dairy Queen for some food. We hung out there for around an hour and then went back to the field. We now need to win or go home. There were two games today we had to win in order to move on to Sunday.

The first game we did good. My hitting through out the tournament was sub-par. But we went out and won that game. We had one more game to play in order to make it to Sunday now. We were playing against a team that was able to put runs up on the board. But we were able to do that as well.

We went out and had a great first inning scoring a lot of runs, but then we couldn't get anything going after that. We had left the bases loaded twice later in the game. We gave up one big inning to them and they took a lead. We lost the game and got sent home. That was okay to me I guess because I didn't have to pay to rent a hotel room. But I would have enjoyed playing a lot of softball on Sunday.

So I headed back to Renton. I hadn't slept much in the past forty-eight hours, but I wasn't really all that tired. I made it home and got myself some dinner. I stayed up pretty late watching TV and relaxing around the house.

Double Header

I did my first workout for the physical agility test for the SO. I need to shave time off the mile and a half run. I need to shave about one minute. I also need to add more situps. The pushups and the sprint I am doing okay. I have about one month in which to get up to where I need to be.

We had a double header in softball today. Some of the guys were giving me a hard time about the fact that I have a moustache. Someone was saying we haven't won since I started to grow it. I said it wasn't true, but if we were to lose both games I would shave it off.

I started pitching, but I was struggling and I had Jake come in and pitch for me. I didn't do well hitting in the first game either. I went oh-for. We had a small lead, but ended up giving up six runs in the sixth inning which allowed them to take the lead. That just sucked.

The second game I started to hit better. I went three for three with a triple. Jake also got me to pitch the final two innings of the game. I went through those two innings without much for problems. We had an early lead and never gave that one up. So we split the double-header and my moustache stays.

Full Day in Jail

I worked in the jail today. I saw Myers about something that he needed done. It was some printing stuff. Plus I talked to him about being a Reserve. He said I needed to fill out an application. Then I would go through the testing. If I made it the academy would start in September and go for a couple months. They are condensing the academy as much as possible. I am going to have to train for the physical agility test.

While working I had a couple guys working on doing the floors, windows, and doors. It was in need of being done, but no one was doing it.

We had a softball game against Coor's Light. Unfortunately, we couldn't hit when we needed to. We had a lead over them for most of the game. But in one inning we allowed them a free out. From that point on they scored five and took a lead. That was a hard loss to take.

After the game I was on call for the fire department. We had a couple minor calls.

Incredibly Hot

It was a long day in the heat of the hottest day of the summer. It got in the upper nineties today.

I started out with batting practice at the city playfields. Jake needed to work on pitching a little bit for an upcoming tournament. I was hitting the ball well in the batting practice.

I went to the fire station to pick up an ambulance after the BP. It needed to go to station two to get waxed along with the Utility. I was there from around eleven until after four doing the waxing and rig checks. It was a long day doing that, plus it was still really hot, even in the bay.

After the work I took the ambulance back to station one and drove to the city playfields. We had a double header. But the first game we had to FFT because we didn't have enough women to start the game. So we did a practice game against Zeppoz. Then it was on to the second game.

We had enough women for that game. I hit the ball very well. I had three stand-up triples and one single. It was great. After the game Heston and I went to Cougar Country for some dinner. I was very hungry because I didn't have much of anything to eat while I was working all day.

Not Quite the Run Output

We played the same team tonight that we played last week and scored a record thirty-one runs. But this game was very different. We couldn't get any kind of rally going. But neither could the other team. We scored more in one inning last week than we did in the whole game this week. But we did get some timely hitting by some of our bigger sticks.

I have been coming around with my batting average now above five-hundred. I just need to start to hit my extra-base hits. That is probably the biggest difference between my game this year and last year.

A Painful Loss

I went to Moscow to get some business card paper to re-print the dollar off coupons for Cougar Country because the last ones I did had Country spelled County. That sucked.

I stopped in at a scooter place to look at the scooter they had for sale. I looked around and it turns out the ones they sale are Chinese scooters. So they are not great quality, but they are inexpensive and work. But I am still not sure that is what I want to do.

I hung out there for a while talking to Roger from Green's Cleaners. It has been a while since I have really seen him. We talked softball, music, and more. It was a nice conversation.

Later on I had a softball game. It was against Bomb Squad. It was a close game all the way through it, but we were not able to pull it out. We let them score several runs in the top of the seventh inning. We had a chance, but left the bases loaded. I was so disappointed that we didn't pull that one out. We had a chance.

I also was on call for the fire department. We got toned out around one in the morning and ran two calls. But the second one we didn't go to the hospital, so that made for a shorter call.

Steptoe vs Colfax Fire Softball

Colfax and Steptoe Fire had the second annual softball game for bragging rights and a traveling trophy. I had an okay day at the plate, I did get an inside the park homerun driving in the go-ahead runs. But before we knew it the Steptoe team went to work in the sixth inning and they came back for the victory. At one point Scott was at bat. A pitch came towards him. He didn't move and let it go right off the top of his head. It cracked everyone up.

I got in Albion's Ambulance with Jessie and Ben in St. John to go to the Sprint Boat Races. We hung out with the Rosalia ambulance crew and watched the races for the next five hours. It was a lot of fun.

A boat racing in the slough

This boat hit the side hard and ended up flipping

Some of the boats left some big rooster tails

The Jeeps that were used to launch the boats

The one thing that was nice was the weather, at least for the first part of the race. That caused a lot of ten-six-sevens to remove the shirts giving all the more eye candy to enjoy as I was there.

I got back to Colfax and was dropping off some paperwork for some coroner's cases when Heston called about setting up some huge tents for Cougar High School Football Camp. We had to get two of them set up. That took us a couple hours. A. Wilcox was helping... Yet another ten-six-seven.

I went to the fire station and did some Excel work for Rudy to help me consolidate hours for overtime so they could use it during the upcoming negotiations.

Jersey Night Lives On!

I spent a couple hours with Ben driving in Engine Thirty-One going around looking at FDC locations. It started with an EMS call coming in. We went to the scene with Rescue. Then it was off to the engine. No calls came in while we were using the Engine.

I went to the WSU Surplus said with Bruce. We found him some pants to wear but as it turned out the whole box was sold in the auction and we were not able to get the pants. That sucked for him.

We were going to be playing against his team this evening in softball. It wasn't quite a run away like the others games for us. My first at bat was a triple and that felt good to hit it. It was my first extra-base hit in the regular season for men's softball.

We ended up being tied at fourteen each. We went into the eighth inning. We shut down Tubbs. On our at bat we went to work. Warren hit a double. Peter got walked and Kelly hit the game winning double. It was a nice victory. We are starting to click as a team.

After the game Joe invited me to go to Pete's to meet up with his team, Tubbs. I said I would come down, but I needed to say Happy Birthday to Heather first. I went to the Moose. I said happy birthday to her and said hello to many of the others who are part of that group.

Then I went to Pete's. I was only going to drink pop, but it was Jersey Night. Jessie and Craig from Colfax fire were there. I sat with them for a while and we talked. Craig and I started a text messaging game on accident. We had to text message a single word to the other person that has something to do with the word that was texted to you. We went on with that for a long time.

Joe came over with a shot for everyone. I had one. Then another shot. Then some beer. Then it was over with for me. I got my vehicle home and back for more beer. Then we went to ValHalla. Loren was there and he was drunk. He gave me two Long Island Ice teas that he couldn't finish. Plus I got another drink there.

The next stop was Mike's. We had more to drink there. Plus the guys from Tubbs were being crazy. A couple of them were in the dancing cage having fun. Then it was off to Thai Ginger, which use to be Shermers. On the way Chambers, from Tubbs, wanted to run to the bar. We were taking a taxi. He went off sprinting. A couple Pullman cops were in the area and almost had to jump out of his way. They were wondering what the heck was going on.

He beat us to the bar. We had more to drink there. We played some darts and other games. Then it was across the street to My Office. That was the final stop of the night. We closed out My Office. I spent time talking with Jake and Mac from Tubbs. I think both of them are ten-six-sevens. It was a very fun night. I got a ride home in a taxi. I stayed up for a while drinking water before going to bed. It was going to be a short night because I have to get up on the early side tomorrow.

A Big Day Scoring Runs

This morning I was very tired getting up after only a couple hours of sleep. I went to the station and met up with Gecas. We took Engine Thirty-One out to do drive and pump time. We spent a couple hours driving and about thirty minutes pumping.

I got done in time to rush down to Lewiston to see the doctor about my finger. He said the injury I have usually takes nine months to heal. He said I should buddy-splint my finger. He gave me a couple buddy splints. He suggested using tape when I am playing softball. It was good to know it will heal on its own, but it will take a long time.

I got back and started to get ready for my softball game. It was being played over in Moscow. We were playing a team we have never played because they are a new team. We scored eleven runs in the first inning and just kept hitting away. We scored a total of thirty-one runs in the game. That is a record for the softball team.

After the game I went to the Zzu to meet up with Michele and Heather and the other girls from the softball team. We hung out there until around midnight. I had some nachos and pop as we sat around talking about softball and random other things. It was a fun night out.

Staff Meeting

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

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

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

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

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

Another Tough Loss in Softball

After getting up and starting my morning I went to the camp site where everyone else was. I brought out my muffins as we started to cook breakfast. I did the eggs. Carl cooked the hashbrowns and Jim cooked the bacon. We sat down to eat breakfast then people started to pack up.

I got my motorhome taken care of then I helped Jim and Carl with their camp areas. We left there around eleven in the morning. I got back to Pullman and got cleaned up.

I went down to the station and started with the rig checks. I got the bay cleaned out first and the pump test done. Then the others started to show up and we checked the rigs. That took a couple hours in all. I was done in time for me to be at the coed game.

We only had five guys and five girls show up. That was good because everyone got to play the whole game, but we were hurting at the left side of the infield. We gave up some outs we would not normally give up with our normal starters.

It was a close game, but we were not able to get the timely hits. That has been a problem with all my teams lately. We cannot get a hit when it matters. We ended up losing the game by four runs, but again we had a chance and with our starters there I think we could have won this one.

After the game we went to Cougar Country. I got a Cyclone and we sat around talking before breaking up a little after eight. I went home and I was on call for the rest of the night. We got one call that came in around three in the morning and that was about it for the night.

Regular Season Game Two

We got to play softball again tonight even though the weather was not that great. I had to call in a sub because we had people who were not going to be there. But the problem was I didn't remember about Taj. We ended up playing with only nine players. That probably cost us in the outfield.

We were playing against a team that was nearly unstoppable for several years. But this season they have not been as strong. We held tight with them the whole way, but we were not able to get the timely hitting necessary to win the game. We went down and that sucked.

I spent time hanging out at My Office with some people from the fire department as it was Greg's retirement get together. We spent time talking about the old times and telling stories with each other.

A Day of Losses

Started out with the single elimination tournament. We played Jake and Nick's team again. But this time we could not get the basehits. We could not score when needed. So we lost that game. We went to the losers bracket and played another game. That was against the Bomb Squad. We lost that game too. We ended up in fourth place. That doesn't sound bad... unless you know there were only four teams playing.

After the game we went to Pete's. Several players from other teams were there. I had some nachos and hung out for a while, but I was tired and I headed out after about one hour.

I had some time to wait until the coed game was to start. We were playing against the Zeppoz team. We needed to win this game to remain in a tie for first place. But we lost the game. It was close at the end as we mounted a comeback, but it wasn't good enough. Because Matt was late getting there I started at Short Stop. I had one play where a ball was smoked my way. I made a play on it and recorded the out.

After the game Mike invited me to his place for some elk burgers. It was very good elk. I had two burgers and watched some basketball while I was there. I also had a slice of pie before I left. It was a good dinner.

Softball Tournament in Pullman

The morning wasn't looking great for a softball tournament. I was a little worried about a rainout. We started to play and the rain went away, then it came back and went away again. By the afternoon the weather was decent.

We lost the first game to the Bomb Squad. Then it was off to play a team from Lewiston. We did really well and hit around on them a lot. We beat them. Later we played the team that Jake and Nick put together. We were losing, but we were the home team.

We ended up beating them in the bottom of the seventh inning. We had a little rally and just went up on the with a big hit. That was fun to do the come back victory.

After the game we went to Pete's Bar and Grill. I got some dinner and hung out with most of the team for about two hours. Almost everyone was heading out to Dan and Michele's for Tory's graduation party. It was for Tory and the adult friends of the family.

Most of the softball players were there. I went around and talked with different people and chatted with them. I had some food there before going home around ten in the evening. I got some stuff done around the house before going to bed.

Spending Spree

As much as I hate spending a lot of money, it can be fun, when you have it to spend. Today was the purchase of wants. First I want a heater/AC unit for the garage. I would like to keep it cool in the summer and warm in the winter. I am going to have to buy some more insulation for the garage door, but I found a unit that I ordered.

Then it was off to Pullman Building Supply. I purchased some wood and other materials for making the new door panels for my truck. I am replacing the wood that has gone bad.

I stopped at Palouse Audio for their sale. I was able to purchase two radios, one for the Bumblebee and one for the motorhome. I got a CD changer that does MP3s for the motorhome too.

At Shopko I bought some shorts and a new pair of shoes. I was there for some book ends. I almost bought some DVD's but I put those back. I couldn't find the book ends, but I bought some new pair of shorts that had a belt built in, so I hope as I lose more weight I can just keep tightening the belt.

We finally got to play softball! It started to get ugly as it was getting closer to game time with some raindrops falling. But we were able to play the game. The bad part was that we lost the game to the Bomb Squad. We just did not look very good out there. The month off for some of the guys we very evident.

Following the game Peter and I went to My Office to have some beverages and watch some TV. We talked about friendship and religion. I didn't know Peter is a religious guy who, when back home, goes to church weekly.

A Record Number of Rainouts

We have yet to play a regular season softball game. We are the only A-league team to not have played a regular season game. We were rained out again today. I am interested in playing softball. I hope one of these days we will get to actually do that. I have a feeling we will either extend the season, cut it short (with refunds I hope) or we will have a lot of double-headers with games on Wednesday's as well.

That made it so I could go to Colfax Fire training tonight. It was OTEP training in Steptoe. We were doing patient assessment. The training took a couple hours total. I was able to be an evaluator. Since becoming an EMS Evaluator I have had a chance to use those skills. That is pretty fun.

I also decided I need to get my den and garage cleaned up. I broke it down in to multiple tasks. I assigned each task for one week. It will take a month and a half to get it all done, but I figured if I do it in steps rather than all at once it will be more manageable. I will probably even get to those tasks because they are more manageable.

First Coed Regular Season Win

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watching Jon Play Ball

I had to head to Seattle this morning for a meeting at the office. I went straight there after getting some pop. The meeting started around one o'clock in the afternoon. It went for two hours. We were talking about the new projects that we are going to start to work on.

After the meeting I stayed at the office until around five to talk with Barb. She filled me in on a lot of the things that have happened to the two companies since the purchase.

I headed home for some dinner then it was off to meet up with Jon for a softball game at Marymoor Park. It turned out to be a double header. Both teams that played were not all that good, really. But Jon's team had a chance to win the first game, but gave up a big inning. The second game was not even close. I am not sure what level of play these teams were at, but I would have put them in B or C ball around here.

Poker Night at My Place

With yet another rainout this softball season we played another night of poker at my place. I was disappointed that we were rained out with the small amount of rain that had fallen.

John and Peter came over for cards. We played with the three of us for a couple hours. Peter had to leave around ten, then John and I did a twenty dollar Texas Hold'em heads up tournament. John won again. At the end I wasn't getting anything to play with.

One thing I need to do is start to be more aggressive and try to read John a little more. I think with him I have been so predictable that when I bet he knows I have something and he runs away, unless he has something. So I need to get the reputation with him that I could be bluffing so he doesn't know what I am trying to do.

I also need to stop being timid about winning a lot of money on the pots. For some reason I feel bad when I start winning a lot of money, so I don't play as I should be playing. I need to get over that.

Moses Lake Softball Tournament

I wasn't all the excited about the long wait between waking up and playing in our first softball game after the noon hour, but what are you going to do. I stayed in bed pretty late, going to sleep after waking up every hour or so.

Finally I got up and had some breakfast. I got my motorhome ready to go and helped some of the others get their camping area taken down.

We hit the road to head to the game early. I wanted to fuel up and get some donuts. After seeing them yesterday and someone else talking about them I had to go get some.

After having the donuts we went to the field. Everyone else was just getting there. We did some throwing of the ball around and got ready for our first game. We, again, had some troubles winning the game. I went one for two. That is not a good sign when you get only two at bats in a game.

We didn't have a lot of time between games. We made our way to the other field. We were playing a team that Geo's brother plays on. We should have beat them, but we couldn't get timely hitting. We hit into so many double plays during this tournament we were killing our own rallies. On a personal note I went three for four with three RBI. It was a good game for me.

We left with our heads down after losing a lot of games we shouldn't be losing. Bruce and I hit the road and Warren went back with his girlfriend.

We were about one-hundred miles from Pullman went I heard a loud noise. We pulled over to find the skin on the door get torn off. Bruce and I put a tarp over it to protect it and then just slowly drove back into Pullman. That added a lot of time onto the trip back.

Once back we unloaded stuff from the motorhome. I put my stuff away and I was thinking about going out, but I decided to stay in and work on the webpage for the Merchants and just relax. I had to be up in the morning for golf.

The Third Tournament

Took off this morning with Bruce and Warren heading to Moses Lake for our softball tournament. The drive was pretty uneventful. We pulled into the parking lot about thirty minutes before game time. We got ready, threw the ball around and started to play. I had a bad first game going hitless in three at bats. But the second game was much better.

We were playing against a guy who use to play intramurals. Kelly and Jake really wanted to beat his team. We played them tough and our hitting was better. I was two for three at the plate. We won that game which made us feel a lot better going into the evening.

We carpooled out to a ranch in the country where we were going to spend the night. I got the motorhome set up, but the AC wasn't working. I need to have that looked at.

BKoe came over from the academy to play softball with us. Bruce, BKoe, and I drove into town and went to WalMart to get some food for cooking on the grill. When we got back we cooked everything up and sat around talking.

The winds started to come up and it was getting very windy. We huddled on the backside of one of the tents to act as a wind break. Everyone headed off to bed around ten o'clock which was early compared to normal.