Another Day In Life

I sat around my room most of yesterday instead of going out after word of my uncle dying. My friends helped me a lot as far as keeping me from going insane with depression but I managed to stay pretty low-key for the remainder of the night. Today is going really well but I'm still feeling pretty shitty. Such is life dealing with death. Today started with dealing with our tracked ARFF rigs. Both of the ones with the better tracked systems were in the firehouse today getting work on them. To my surprise, I spent most of the morning getting checked off to drive the engines and the tanker. Because of lack of staffing, I was assigned as the operator of one of our engines before I was able to complete our written DPO test and go out and do some pumping evolutions. My Lt and Capt both agree that since I have prior experience dealing with engines…particularly Pierces than it shouldn't be a big deal for me to get rushed through the process to help with staffing. Today I actually got to drive Engine 1 for the first time as well….albeit 200 yards to back it into the bays. Something about driving fire apparatus gets me really excited. As we speak, I'm working on some pre-planning while sitting through a Wilderness First Responder Protocol refresher which is making me interesting in volunteering for the SAR team down here. I think it would be a lot of fun and a great experience considering it combines 3 things I absolutely love: Technical Rescue, Mountaineering, and EMS. As I've been thinking about various things to take my mind off of the pain of the death of my uncle, I had been thinking of various things to do with my life over the next couple of years. One of them has been Search and Rescue (SAR). I had actually tried to join Shenandoah Mountain Rescue Group in Vienna, VA but it wasn't even three weeks after I started showing up to meetings when my dad died. Now, that I'm down here, I can start partaking in such activities which will also take my mind off problems back home. I don't know about this year but I'd definitely love to do a winter-over down here.