Yes. I know. I haven't been exactly faithful with keeping this updated but darnit, I'm a busy guy. So heres the dump on whats happenin' lately. Ball has started up. Shelley is coaching and both girls are playing on the same team this year......makes it nice and easy for us when it comes to out of town games! Weather has been all over the place lately. Last week it was up around 25-27 degrees but the last couple of days have been down right cool. Almost need a touque today if you're going to be outside for more than a minute or two. Kids played in a ball tourney in Deloraine lastweekend. 2 games. won the first but we lost the second. Both were pretty good games with the scores being close. I think Brook will be a good pitcher and back catcher if she can stay focused on the play for long enough. We had her at a pitching clinic last thursday and if she stays focused and remembers her proper mechanics she can hum balls right in there. Becca, well, Becca's attitude can get in the way quite a bit. Her "I don't care" 'tude is getting to be a big pain. She seems to like to play ball but only if things go her way! Typical!

I'm still in Brandon and recently took a hazardous materials technician course. Basically means that I get to be the guys in the big blue space suit to go in and fixy fixy makee makee all better when there is a chemial spill or some idiot sends anthrax in the mail or simular situations. Also looking at going to Ottawa in the fall to get some training in weapons of mass destruction. AKA: really bad stuff like dirty nuc bombs, sarin gas, terrorist attacks and that kind of stuff. If I get accepted to go to that and get through those 2 weeks then I get to go to Suffield, Ab. next year for live agent training. Ottawa is just theory, Suffield is actuall poison gas and stuff! Yikes! You know things could go bad when you have to carry your own atropine auto injector and learn how to stab yourself with it in the heart! But really looking forward to it! Other than that work has been its usual mixture of busy and quiet. My first night last week was agreeably quiet with only 3 calls all night. But my last night was BUSY! 9 calls in 2 hours....crazy!! 2 code calls back to back...which is a first for me, a couple of overdoses, one including 3 kids aged 2, 4 and 5 that swallowed mums zyban(proves it doesn't work for helping to quit smoking 'cause the 5 yr old wanted to have a smoke on the way to the hospital! I know...bad joke) Add to that a whole bunch more and you get one really tired Mike the next AM. Slept till 1:30 the next day when my pager at home went off for a shed and grass fire! Oh well, such is life when emergencies are your passion.

Not alot more new other than that.

Badges? We don't need no steenken' badges!!

Hola from out east.

Well........east of B.C. anyway!

So.......I haven't been all that able to keep up a regular commentary on my so called life out here but, darn it, I've been busy! Or at least thats my excuse and I'm stickin' to it! Honestly, I don't really have a clue as to where the time goes, along with good intentions.

So. the last couple of weeks have been action packed and fun filled. It finally warmed up enough that I got out the shorts and sandles this past Tuesday. 20 Above! Imagine that! And we finally got rid of the last of the snow. The kids, of course, have been in t-shirts and shorts for some time. Running around outside, shivering and freezing fingers off, "but its warm out Dad!" We went out to Shelley's parent farm last weekend for poker night on Sat. night and the kids had a sleep over while we got to come home! And before any of you jump to the obvious conclusion......yes, we did just go to sleep and recover from a busy week! Funny how that works, eh? Felt alot better in the morning though when we went back out to the farm for lunch. Also got to go for a walk to the spring that Shelley's dad has on the property. Still covered in ice but the kids had fun throwing rocks onto it. Don't quite understand that but it kept them occupied for a while. Then came the inevitable "I'm bored again" What did we do when we were kids? I don't ever recall telling my parents "I'm bored" I don't know if that would have earned us a whack upside the head and being told to get outside and find something to do or what but it just seems like we always had something to do.

We're also kepping our eyes open for a house these days. Although were in some what of a disagreement as to how bad we really need a house of our own right now. See.......we recently consolidated the last of our personal loans into one big one and in just under 4 years we are completely out of debt. Yahooooo! As long as nothing stupid happens, that is. Right now we are renting a decent house in town @ $450 / month which includes water and hydro and as much as I hate to line someone elses pockets with our money we do have it darn good. We also plan on taking the girls to Disney Land (or Dismal World for all you Mr. Brownell students out there) next spring (or so Shelley has been promising the girls for the last year anyways) so this also enables us to save a couple of hundred bucks a month to put towards that. And yet Shelley keeps looking at houses coming on the market here and talking to our realtor about them and walking through them and all that crap that comes with wanting to purchase something. So I don't really know what to think. We've talked about it and I thought we came to an agreement about it, but she still is looking! Did I miss something there?

Other than that its been work, come home, do stuff around here, go back to work, etc, etc, etc. I'm sure you all know the drill. Ball starts soon and Shel is coaching again this year and both girls will be on the same team so that'll be so much nicer. They are both coming around quite nice with their progress which is nice to see. I just hope it stays warmer this spring than last so I don't have to wrap myself in a thermal blanket to watch their games!

Better end on that note. I'm taking a course on hazardous materials for the next 2 weeks and the study package that I was given hasn't been cracked yet. Told ya I've been busy!

oxoxoxoxoxo to everyone

workin' the night shift

Just a quicky as I'm at work. Thought I'd better get on here 'cause I haven't been able to get the time lately and it happens to be a quiet night - so far!!! Not a whole lot new lately. The weather hasn't been all that nice as of the past week. We went from around 10 above last week to below 0 for highs this week. Sucks! Getting better slowly though. Today was only minus 1 with bright sunshine which is better than 20 below with snow. Not as nice as what you guys back in gods country are getting though.

Been quiet at work lately as well. At least not a whole lot of interesting calls. A few B.S. ones here and there - the usual - "I'm drunk and fell down" or "I'm old and sick and need someone to talk to" or "my girlfriend passed out on me before putting out so I'm gonna call 911 on her to get back at her" (I shit you not!!) Those kind of B.S. calls. And it wouldn't be so bad if they were during the day but it gets annoying anytime after 23:00 hrs, which coincidentally is when they mostly come in. But its what I get the big bucks for so I can't complain too much.

Better go

Ciao

Spring has sprung!

Well, it finally seems that spring has made an appearence on the prairies. We went from a pile of snow just last week to almost nothing on the ground today. Of course a couple of days of light showers helps things along nicely. Yesterday was up to 17 and the girls were in short sleeve shirts and Becca had on short for the afternoon. I had Brooklynn out learning how to throw a lasso trying to catch a 5 gallon pail. She did quite well for her first real attempt at it. But "it's not the same as a cow dad". Typical!! Why start off crawling when we can go straight to a hundred miles an hour! She also got bucked off for the first time last Saturday. Something I knew was coming sooner or later. She was over at a friends place riding bareback and the horse got spooked. No major owies, just some bumps and bruises and it hasn't slowed her down so I'm not worried.

First day back at work today. Well, not really work. Had a Safe Boating Course so I did have to go in but I sat in a classroom all day instead of doing calls. Not a bad way to make a days worth of pay but not exactly what I'd call fun!

See ya

Mornin'

We just got a new digital camera so here are some pics of the girls and our Shih Tzu hound, Tucker.

Guess I'd better get on here and get writing. Would have tried yesterday but we were a little busy at work the night before and I ended up with only about a 1/2 hours sleep(kinda like being a new parent with a sick kid but getting paid for it) so I pretty much slept the day away before having to go back in for my last night.

So. A little about work the last couple of days, shall we? My second day was okay. We ony had a couple of ambulance calls and one false alarm to deal with. And the amb. calls were relatively minor: 1lady with flu symptoms, another with minor shortness of breath and an older fella that had had a fall in his apt. and needed help off the floor. Nothing that got the adrenaline revved. On to my first night. Things got STUPID! It was shaping up to be a decnt evening until about 2300 hrs - one call for a minor MVA with no pts and that was right at shift change at 1730. We then had our regular monthly union mtg(boring , although we're in contract talks right now so we got the skinny on how thats going) and cleaned the offices on the second floor for the chiefs, inspectors and secrateries. After that was done we all sat down to watch a little tube. A nice quiet night in Brandon. That is until stupid people started doing stupid things! We had a fire alarm pulled by a guy who just broke up with his girlfriend to start with. Don't know what that was supposed to accomplish - somehow I don't think it made her want to get back together with him! Then the fun really got going. We went to a mid 20's girl who decided it might be a good idea to take a bunch of her psych pills and wash 'em down with a 6 of lucky beer. She was stable when we got there but crapped out on the nurses when we got her to emerg - not OUR problem, tee hee - nothin' really bad, just decreased level of consciousness(LOC for future reference). Then we went to a domestic where 2 girls in their 20's were pepper sprayed and clubbed with a baseball bat by other girls. Pepper spray seems to be gaining in popularity b/c thats the 4th or 5th call like that I've been to in the last month and a half. Anyway, the girls were'nt beat up too bad - no major trauma - so we washed out the eyes of the one with the most pepper spray on the sidewalk and transported both to emerg. Then just as we cleared the H we got a call for a girl who had taken a mitt full of her boyfriends pills and tried to slice and dice her arms up, all the while polishing off a 26 of vodka. EXCELLENT! And for some reason she didn't seem to want our help. So we had a chat with her about the possibility of her coming with us instead of the cops 'cause we're so much better looking than they are and she decided that might be a good idea. Her arms were'nt in too bad a shape - mostly superficial lacerations - but the pills she took were bad news so I got to drive lights and sirens again to emerg. Things quieted down after that but I couldn't get back to sleep so I stayed up and cruised the net for the duration of the shift. Last night was much better. Started off with a residential fire alarm at about 1900 hrs - someone cooking and not paying attention. Then we had a lady beat up on the street for some money by the girls she was drinking with earlier. Nice! She was fine but we transported anyway 'cause she did say that she was kicked in the head and it bounced off the sidewalk a couple of times. I was attending last night so it was my ear that got talked off on the way to the H. Then we went to an elferly lady that was in respiratory distress. She had a hell of a time catching her breath and was full of fluid when I listened to her lungs so we threw on some O2 and gave her ventolin via a nebulizer and she came around rather nicely after that. Another one saved!! I'd rather do those kind of calls all night long than do the B.S. ones but I guess I've got no choice in the matter. After that it was blessedly quiet. Went to bed at 2330 and woke up to the gong at 10 to 7 this morning when we have to get out of the rack. Couple cups of coffee then the 45 min drive home for my 4 days off

Thats been my tour in a nutshell.

I'll be back!

My very first blog!

Howdy do from the prairies.
Since I can't see to get around to e-mailing everybody Erin gave me the idea to set this up so that I can at least keep you all up to date on the Hole's in Manitoba.

I also want to keep some type of record of what I do for work on a semi daily basis and this might be an interesting way to do so.

So, let us begin shall we?

Kids are off to bed and Shelley is just tucking Becca in. I worked today so this'll be short and sweet.
Not a whole lot happened at work today - Went to a false alarm caused by tenants in an apt. who bumped a smoke detector in the hallway while they were moving. And that was the extent of it. Not all that exciting but it was nice for a Sunday.