Ups and Downs

I love a busy day. I down right hate busy work, but I love genuinely busy days. Between inspections, calls, and training, the majority of the day went without hiccups. The evening started to wind down after we were done with our medical run around 2000. Asides from a few incidents were I truly got pissed at a few people, today's shift went really well and I'm very glad for it. As I sat down in front of my computer tonight, I made some decisions regarding the next couple of months. 1) We received an email today from Captain Paul asking us to request a redeployment date between the 19th, 21st, and 23rd of February. Wanting to take full advantage of the situation, I chose the 19th so that I'd have as much time as possible to hang out in New Zealand. 2) I chose to leave New Zealand on the 7th of March which will give me about 3 1/2 weeks in DC before I head out west. 3) Today I got paid. With that being said, in the morning (now being 0120) I'm going to fax my application into the Wilderness Medical Institute with my credit card info for the $1000 deposit required for Wilderness EMT making it semi-official that I'm committing to taking this course in April. As weird as it sounds, I feel naked without an EMT certification.

Today had its ups, but it also had its downs. Normally, I don't get offended. I mean, it takes a lot of effort to offend me. Somehow, I managed to get pretty offended to the point I had to do a lot of venting to Captain Bragg (more just someone to vent to not necessarily looking for intervention). I'm not going to go into details but I'll list the things that have been lingering in my mind that do offend me:

I get offended when people question the way I do things or the job I do just because it's not what they would do. Going on 6 years of experience, I think I know how to do my job without strife or condescending attitudes

I get offended when people insult my way of life to my face

I get really offended when people shit on the career I've dedicated 6 years of my life and time to. This one especially bothers me since several people on base have done this. I don't know why this bothers me so. I guess the fire service is the one thing I take true pride in and it pisses me the hell off when people who do not understand the work I as well as other firefighters and EMT's do bash our jobs and the way we do things. Today/night I was pissed to the point where I almost got up and walked away from a few good friends in order to keep from getting really pissed and blowing up in the galley. I'm going to leave it at that because I'm still pretty fucking steaming from having to hear shit about the job I love with every inch of my being from a few dozen people over the past week.


Asides from what I just ranted about, life is crazy in town. 10% of the town's population of 1200 people have either the flue or a bad case of the cold (we call it the "crud" down here). Considering I was pretty sick most of the latter half of October and the Beginning of December, I'm hoping that I don't get sick again. Down here, when you test positive for the flue you are quarantined in your room for 2-3 days. So far my roommate has been quarantined, a girl I'm dating down here, 2 of her suite mates have been quarantined, and a whole array of people we associate with on a daily basis have been either quarantined or live with a quarantined roommate or roommates. Hopefully this pandemic will die soon....