pyro's corner

so we have been pretty busy with the fire dept lately. i was on another call a little while ago, so i counted the calls for just may. so far we are averaging a call a day, thats right we have had 16 calls this month already. 6 days this month we have had at least 2 calls on the same day. it’s been busy enough that even our new guys havent been able to avoid getting envolved which is a good learning experience for them. it probably doesnt hurt that they are eager to go on calls either, so getting them out is good. currently we are in the process of some changes in policy at the dept, and we are still working on this 2nd station. i got promoted to a captains spot, the previous captain had to retire for medical reasons, i would gladly trade a whole bunch of stuff if we could have him back. jer was a really good guy and we will all miss him.

work has been fairly busy, steady may be a better word. we are in the process of building a new road into our equipment yard so thats fun to do, no real time constraints to deal with and we can spend some extra time learning. the weather lately had been screwy. i dont mind cooler temps, but the damn wind needs to go away. i eagerly await the bass opener coming up soon. i have some more reloading to do here in the next month or so, then i need to go do some more shooting. deer season will be upon me before i know it.

so yesterday i turned 29. to bad for me the color of my hair indicates something more along the lines of 49. of course the card i got from my wife had to remind me of that. (thanks dear) the day started off pretty normal, i went to pick up some parts in Detroit Lakes first thing in the morning. i took said parts to our shop and traded my brother in law his pickup back. it was about 0920 hrs and i was just about to go pick up the kids from grandma’s house when my fire dept pager went off. so i took a right turn down my drive way and called grandma. grandma was already informed about the fire, as grandpa left his pager in the charger on accident " go ahead and go to the fire i dont mind watching the kids". I had just been promoted to a captain on our dept last week and this would be my first structure fire in said position. I called the chief on my newly issued radio and let him know i was on the way, i figured we may end up short on man power. thankfully we ended up with enough people to do the job. as soon as i got to our fire hall it was just me and the chief, "hmm this isnt good" i thought to myself. brother in law #2 was on the way and got there shortly after i did so we jumped in our #1 truck and headed off. farguy and another firefighter came behind us with our water tender grandpa and tall guy showed up a little later with another tender. We have a lot of new guys on our dept right now, so this fire was the perfect place to let them "get dirty". As the engineer my job was to get water to my chief and so i first lowered our drop tank down and set it up behind our pumper, then i got the 6" suction hose and low level strainer our and hooked it to the truck, "now i just wait until my tender gets here to dump some water". The guys grabbed a hose and i charged the line for them and they sprayed around the perimeter until more help arrived. When help arrived we got the new guys in packs, and turned them loose under the  guidence of some of the vets of the dept. I think it was good experience for them, they found out that without even being inside of a burning building our protective gear gets very hot. i told them, yeah it does get hot just imagine it  being 85 degrees outside as opposed to the 55 degrees it was yesterday. This was the first time i can remember since i joined the dept that i was on a structure fire and didnt touch a nozzle.

that was an ok start to my birthday. later on in the day aubrey started to really sound like crap, so we decided to take her in to the hospital. we got there at 20:00hrs and she was admitted to the er. she sounds like crap, has a crappy cough crap coming out of her nose right eye and left ear.  the doctor felt fairly sure that it was viral, but he felt in her case it wouldnt hurt to give her some medicine to maybe prevent something bacterial from starting later. so we got home at like 2200hrs and put the kids in bed. i didnt even get to drink one of my leinenkugel beers! oh well i got some ice cream in me before bed. weirdest birthday i can ever remember.

well i went to fargo to help with the flood. my first experience was 16 hrs of watching the clay dikes being reinforced by heavy equipment. not a lot to see there, the area where we concentrated our efforts on wasnt developed yet. the next day i ended up in moorhead with the fire dept. we worked in the river shore area from 30th to 37th. it was strange for this wyoming boy to see so much water. it was amazing how fast a group of fire fighters could put up a sand bag dike too. they lost three homes on the very north edge of that street, and build dikes and began to pump water out of the fourth home into the yard of the third to save the fourth. the rest of the homes on the street were safe, but not out of the woods yet.

So, we returned from the cities last night. We went down there for followups, we dont quite have phaseII completed just yet. The plastic surgeon saw what we saw, there is a small fistula (hole) in the middle of her palate, basically in the area where the two sides where stitched together is where the hole is. He though it may grown back together on its own, if not he said it would be fairly easy to repair. We had to visit the ear nose and throat dr. as well. They had aubrey do some hearing tests, and they noticed right away that she had issues with her right ear again. The left ear she passed with ease, the audioligst thought maybe her ear tube in her right ear was plugged, the e.n.t confirmed that, so we were told to place 3 drops of hydrogen peroxide in that ear twice a day until she gets fussy, then we know its open. If that doesnt solve the issue, we would be forced to replace the tube.

So, i got a copy of the saturday paper, and on the front page they were talking about the upcoming septic rule changes and proposals of the hubbard county commissioners adding extra stuff to the rules. Fine, and dandy, but when i started to read more into it i became furious. There is a few people on the county commission that dont understand septics and its obvious to my based on there comments. I put septics in for a living i go to school every other year some times every year to keep up with the states continuing education process in this field. I feel i am pretty qualified to talk about septics, these people on the commissioners board however arent educated in the field, and in my opinion shouldnt shoot off there mouths when they dont know what the hell they are talking about. the univ of Minnesota has its own dept that spends a great deal of time year round not only researching but perfecting septics to be not only environmentally safe, but also effective in doing there job. these misinformed commissioners however must  not relize that. if they knew anything they would relize that most everything they talked about in that article is false, blaming properly installed septics on lake pollution is bullshit, any new system will not deliver septic water into any "water of the state". the only systems that are doing that are very old ones that wouldnt pass a compliance inspection anyway. then there is people online on that newspapers web page making it worse, talkign about drinking urine after passing through 3ft of sand, and saying its not safe. actually 3ft is a conservative number, good clean sand will actually filter septic water in 18 inches of clean sand, and it be safer to drink than the water that the city of St. Cloud consumes on a daily basis. people just dont understand septics, properly installed used and maintained septics are the best way to deal with waste water.

well im here, yes im still alive, for some of you im sorry i couldnt die soon enough to bad you get to listen to me some more.

anywho, gillettes told us that feb.02 2009 is the date scheduled for aubrey’s palate repair sugery, so it looks like we will spend a better part of that week in the cities, and i suppose end up back there again the following tuesday. i sorta hate going down there, but part of me likes it, i kinda enjoy site seeing some times. bad part is that when the weather turns sour so does i94, this is no shit, it took us 2 hours to go from st paul to monticello on i94, and then it was like another 4 hrs from monticello to home. im excited about this weekend, there is a yearly gun show in fargo at the civic center and i do enjoy going to it and browsing around the two rooms worth of guns and ammo and other accessories, hope the weather holds up. aubrey is cutting a tooth so her mood has been about as predictable as a women going through menopause. sleeps all night one night, up 2-3 times the next. then she eats fine one feeding and the next time she doesnt want anything to do with it. we have to ween her off a bottle before the surgery which kinda sucks, she isnt even 8 months old yet and wont be 9 months old yet by surgery day. talk about moving though, she finally decided she wanted to roll on the floor and now she does it at will which is cool. fire dept has been busy with a fair amount of calls, we are expanding to add a new satellite station and added like 10 new members and they all seem to like it, they already took there first responder classes and there firefighter classes start on jan 5. we need new blood, a lot of the guys on our dept are over 40 and they wont do it forever, so getting a hand full of new young guns is nice.

i wish i was as dedicated to blogging as my friends far side and east side prof. but im not. the problem i have with blogging is that unless there is something on my mind that i really want to talk about, i wont do it. to me a blog should have meaning, you shouldnt just ramble on with nonsense you know?? i like to spend time talking to people online about guns, scopes, hunting and reloading. from time to time we tell jokes or stories and we laugh. for me thats a lot easier than picking something to talk about every day. i’m not sure if my life is that boring that i dont have intresting stuff to talk about every day, or if im just a hermit that doesnt want to talk to anybody. i see the local crazies were out on the mill pond two weeks ago, you guys are either brave or stupid. i have been in the frigid waters of fremont lake in pinedale wyoming in the middle of the winter standing over 300ft of water below and it was colder than hell, so you guys can have it. once they start to drive trucks out there or christmas comes around i will think about going out. speaking of trucks, i do not feel at all comfortable riding in a truck across the ice, 4 wheeler or snowmobile im fine with that, trucks nuh uh! i spent my first week of "daddy day care" with three kids this time instead of the normal two, and yikes thats a trip. anywho, im going to leave this blog at that.

well its that time of year again for me to take a rest, or not. we are pretty well done for now at work, so i get to take over the young’un watching. rifle season for deer has come and gone and i was shut out, i didnt see one single deer the whole season. my dad came up and hunted a few days with me which was awesome, i havent hunted with him since i lived at home. dad managed to shoot a deer and also cut the hell out of himself, he ended up in the e.r getting 10 stitches in his hand. the old man shot a very nice 6 point buck, he was very excited wanted pictures after we got it to the shop which we took a ton of them. he was excited as a 12 yr old kid, only he is 70 years older so that was enough to make up for my failure. i was really hoping to see a deer, i had a brand new rifle i was dying to try out and i had spent many of hours developing and testing loads just for this seasons hunt and to no avail i come away empty, i was pretty bummed. the boys were pretty excited to see my dad. the little one is doing very well she eats like a horse and is doing rather well, other than all of the damn ear infections, i thought ear tubes were suppose to alleviate that problem, i guess i was wrong.

well we finally made it back from the cities. aubrey had he first surgery to fix her cleft lip monday morning. everything went pretty well except she wasnt real intrested in eating. we ended up staying an extra night because of it, today we had better luck and she finally got to come home, she looks excellent. will add pictures when the become available.

so its getting to be that time of year, i can tell because my trigger finger is getting a little ancy on me. ive still got a ton of loading and testing to do before the opener in early nov. im hoping that cooler weather with no wind will prevail on weekends soon so i can get going on my testing.  some times i wish we could hunt 6 months out of the year instead of 2 weeks. anywho, im working on my .264win mag in a rem m700 cdl sf, which is a beautiful rifle, and the .264 hauls ass and hits hard so im excited to come up with a load that shoots well so i can smack some deer this fall.