Firehouse

We had our fire open house this last week. It's an activity we do every year during national fire prevention week. We pull out all the engines and trucks, life flight lands one of their helicopters, the highway patrol brings their car crash simulator and we give out all kinds of pamphlets, stickers and magnets about fire safety.
My brother in law Jared came up from Lehi with 3 of his kids and I think they had a great time.
Here's Lucy and her cousins Tyler and Carter with the life flight helicopter.


Lucy and her cousins climbed inside and out side of Truck 61.



Tyler and Lucy inside of Engine 61.

Myself, Lucy & Lariann on the bumper of Engine 61.

Here's Jared with his kids Carter, Tyler & Ali also on Engine 61.

Here's Firefighter Harwood and Asst. Cheif Lee, our biggest and smallest members, going head to head in the car crash simulator.

Our department doesn't actually have a dalmatian but one our firefighter has one and brought her along. Lucy loved the dog. Our clown though was not as well received by Lucy. She didn't cry but she wasn't very enthusiastic about seeing him.


They also had an awards ceremony this week at city council meeting for those of us who were involved in the tanker fire incident back in February of 2005. Basically everyone on the department at the time was there so just about every body got an award. I don't think we really deserved one I mean it is our job to go out and do this so basically being paid is enough award for me. Most everybody on the department feels the same but we all went anyway. My award was a heroism award for "Knowingly placing my life in danger to save anothers". As far as I am concerned I was just doing my job.

New Job

This last Friday I worked my last day for Southwest Ambualnce. And staring Monday I will be working for LDS Church Security.
I decided to make the change for several reasons. Better benifits and better pay were a big part of that. Also there wasn't any where to go at the ambulance. Our operation in Salt Lake is small. There's only 3 supervisor postions and two upper managment spots. Not alot of room for advancement. There's no pension, unlike the fire and police departments where you can retire in 20 years. I couldn't see my self trying to lift patients on the gurney until I was 65. All I really had to look forward to at Southwest was a 30 cent pay raise every year. There just wasn't a long term future at that company.
Don't get me wrong I loved doing ambulance work. Well most of the time. I won't miss getting up at 2am every morning, taking drunks to the hospital who are to intoxicated to go to jail or having to step foot in the homeless shelter.
I will miss the excitment. Doing CPR, going on major auto wrecks and taking major traumas.
I'll still get the chance to do some of that just not as much. I'm going to keep working part-time for Kaysville Fire. I just won't have the stabbing and shootins like I did in Salt Lake but I also won't have the drunks and homeless either.
There's going to be some adjustment to. I won't be able to play video games, watch TV, surf the internet, watch movies, go shopping and sleep like I did on the ambulance. I've got to work while I'm at work. I also won't have 4 days off in a row any more of course I also won't have to go to work for 24 hours or more I'll only be 8.
This isn't exactly where I wanted to be but it should be a good job and I am excited to be working here. There are alot of opportunities to move up and do some different things. Plus I get to be around all the church stuff all the time. I'll probably get to go to every session of confrence though it'll be to provide security not to watch confrence. But I'll still be there.
I have a month of training and then they send me out. Usually new guys start out at Temple square so that's probably where I'll be. I think I'll look something like this.

October Rules!

October has always been one of my favorite months. The leaves are changing colors, the weather is nice and cool and I have Halloween to look forward to. None of which are the real reasons that I like October. Oh sure those things are nice and all but the real reason is SPORTS!

Football is in full swing. Saturdays are full of college football. I will usually sit down and watch just about any team play, even if I don't have a real attachment to them. I always enjoy watch the Utes play though we don't have cable so I have to go to my in-laws to see alot of the games. And occasionally my almamatter Weber State is on TV and make it a point to check them out as well. Lariann and I usually make it to one or two Wildcat or Ute games each fall. There's nothing quite like watching a game live with a few thousand of your friends.






Since going on my mission to South Carolina I also feel a little attachment to the schools from there the Clemson Tigers and the South Carolina Game Cocks. Though they both seem to disappoint me each year.






I love being able to sit down on Sunday after noons and watch 2 or 3 games. Lucky for us we have the early church so that is possible. My favorite team has always been the Denver Broncos
and who ever is playing the raiders and chiefs. It has come to my attention that some of my cousins support that group of criminals known as the raiders and my own nephew was recently photographed wearing a chiefs jersey. I want you all to know that I will be praying for you and may God have mercy on your souls. I do have several family member who have managed to chose the right, my cousin Carie and brother Greg have both made excellent choices.



And last but certainly not least the Major League Baseball play-offs are hear. And though my beloved St. Louis Cardinals did not get into the post season I do have a team that I will be pulling for, who ever is playing the cubs. It's only been like 100 years since they won a world series in 1908 the last time they were there was 1945. So whats one more year.

Fantasy

This has been along time fantasy of mine. A bunch of princess Leia's having a pillow fight. All they need now is a big Jaba the Hut in the middle.

On that note I think I found some Halloween costumes for my family this year.

For Lariann,Princess Leia in that same steel bikini. I may have a hard time selling this idea to her.

For my self a Han Solo Costume. Only I wont look as nerdy as this guy, I would look alot more dashing much like Harrison Ford.

Which of course would make Lucy-
Our own little baby Chewbacca. All of these costumes do exist and are for sale. Isn't the internet wonderful.

Bloody

Every now and then we go on a medical call that is really weird. This morning we had one of those.
We got called for a hemorrhage(fancy way of saying bleeding).
We get there and the family of this guy tells us he's had a serrated knife and has cut him self. He comes up from down stairs cover, head to toe in blood. There was only a few cuts on him, they weren't incredibly deep and he wasn't actively bleeding from any of them. He had smeared the blood all over himself, his shirt and shorts. It was all dry to.
The firefighters told us we should go take a look at his room. He had splattered blood all over his room. Ceiling, all the walls ceiling to floor, the floor furniture, bed and TV it was all covered in blood. It was all dry just like on him so this had happened some time before his family found him.
He passed out on the way up to the hospital. Our guess is from blood loss.
I guess this is what happens when your crazy and you get bored.

Tumorversary

On the 19th of this month we had the two year anniversary of Larianns tumor or the "Tumorversary" as we like to call it. She also had an MRI last week up at the Huntsman Cancer Institute and things are still looking good.
The Doctor told us the tumor remains looked like they were still shrinking so he recomended another two rounds of chemotherapy, she does chemo for 5 days each month, then they will have her in for another MRI.
If they don't see any improvement then they will do two more rounds of chemo and call it good. If there is improvement then they will do two more rounds of chemo and have her in for another MRI. Basically she has to have an MRI with no improvement to get off the chemo. It looks like that could happen they think the chemo is reaching the end of it's effectiveness. I know Lariann wishes she were off the chemo it tends to make her sick and tired, though she has several medications to help with that, it still dosen't make her 100%.
All things considered we think this was good news. The doctors are very happy with the way things are going and we feel very blessed.
I guess we'll go ahead and call it a "Happy Tumorversary"

Softball

We played our fifth annual Kaysville Fire vs. Farmington Fire softball game last week.
Some genious thought it would be a good idea to eat dinner before the game. So all filled up on pizza and soda then went out and tried to play soft ball.

Lariann took these pictures from behind the back stop, so sorry about the chain link.
Thats me (behind the pole batting) and standing on first base. I went 3-5 with two single and a double, scored 3 runs and had 1 RBI. Not a bad game for me.



It's the type of game where everyone plays regardless of athletic ability or age. Which why our overweight Asst. Chief Brad Lee was able to get in the game. Though he had to have some one run for him. all he did was hit and it kind of wore him out to go up and swing the bat 4 or 5 times.


It's a very high scoring game. We were up 18-11 when FFD scored 15 runs in one inning. We wound up losing 26-18. We definalty need to work on our defense a little bit before next year. FFD leads the all-time series 1-4.

Welcome to Sugar House

At the beging of September I moved into a new area here at Southwest Ambulance in Salt Lake City. I am now in the Sugar House area of the city working on Southwest 3, which is good because it is as far away from the homeless shelter as you can get in out company and it's not as busy as my last station so I have more time for important things like reading, watching TV & movies, sleeping and playing video games.
The funny thing is our station is an old bakery. Our company never took down the bakery signs from off the building. Either they don't want anyone to know that it's an ambulance station or they are to cheap to worry about it.




We have had people come looking for the bakery. I offered a lady a half eaten loaf of wonder bread once, she declined my offer.


See there is an ambulance hiding back there.


And this is what our station looks like on the inside. We actually stay up in the loft where there are bedrooms a kitchen and a bathroom. The down stairs is just empty right now.

So the Sugarhouse Bread Company may not sell much bread any more, but we are big on emergency medical care these days.