Rigs, I think Mr. SCL and I have you beat - we dated on and off for 11 years before we got married and have been married for 18 now. It’s hard to believe sometimes that I have known him since I was 17 years old. Over half my life!
I’m off to bed.
Glad you’re starting to feel better, rigs.
Why am I still EXTREMELY awake.
I’m pulling out the work I was going to do in the morning. Hoping it will make me sleepy. 
GT
You guy have been busy, page four already! Work went, at least I’m off tomorrow.
I’m glad things are going better,Rosie.
Happy Birthday, Jahdra! Congratulations on making it this far, and I’m happy to hear that you’re free. It sounds like things are going great for you. Things are looking up. throws confetti
Gah. I need a vacation!
Sorry for being such a poor MMPer this week. Hugs and kisses! :: stumbles off to bed ::
Morning, y’all!
Mama Tiger – grrr! On your employers being so flaky! (I’m sure you do the “grrr!” part better than I do)
Tarragon – I don’t know about you, but when you posted it was Wednesday here. So there 
Glad you’re feeling better, rigs!
My story for the morning – from Special Teen again: We have an annual Book Fair, to which she went yesterday with some friends (how cool is that, for starters? Teenagers going to a book fair to buy some books!)
Anyway, like any fair. there are about a zillion (other) teenagers there handing out fliers for … well, whatever.
So, she and a friend developed a new “sport.” When a flier is pushed into one of their hands, go on to the next flier distributor, hand it to the distributor and walk on. Let others in the group monitor the reaction… According to her, the WTF??? 
expressions on some of the distributors’ faces was priceless.
I told her that if this is the extent of her teen-age rebellion, I’m totally on-board with it 
(Hey, at least they aren’t getting drunk, high. or hurting anyone. Struck me as some truly harmless fooling around)
ETA: {{{Haze}}} – I’m sure things will be better soon. BTW – how are things coming with re-producing all your paperwork after that purse-snatch? Are you doing OK re: not having any kind of delayed post-traumatic reactions? Have you checked out any of the counseling suggestions from the Uni?
O-tanjobi, omedetou gozaimasu.
I don’t have my computer from Japan yet, so I can’t type it in Japanese.
Hi Overeducated Rodent, glad Jah got you to stop lurking around Been busy, I guess.
Middlebro claims that the reason he married his wife is that “half an hour after meeting her, I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.” Sounds like a good reason to me, as well as the makings of something terribly old fashioned, like a bolero or a country song (country-country, no Shania Twain for this one).
My uncle Jesus was 55 or 56 when he went to another town on business, met an old school friend’s single sister in law and, after phoning and mailing for a month, they announced to the shocked families that they were getting married. This was in the '50s, so by the time the first letter arrived each of them had already sent a dozen more. Not too shabby, a 40 year marriage that was started with both parts in their late 50s.
Morning all, it’s very quiet in the office today - think I might actually get some of my own work done today! It’s beautifully sunny out there but the forecasters are promising rain for later in the morning. Temperature is still supposed to be about 20 Uk degrees though.
I think I’ll have a cup of caffeine first, I didn’t get time for one at home this morning.
On the subject of dating and all, I’ve had 'im indoors for just over eight years now. We’re almost dating ‘cos we don’t see much of each other (I blame World of Soddin’ Warcraft) - does that still count?
ok - but when I actually speak it, I’ve been told my pronounciation is flawless 
Non sequitor of the day:
They’re bringing back the original banana flavored filling in the Twinkie (that was the original flavor when the snack was invented, but during WWII there was a banana shortage, so they went to vanilla flavored)
Iff’n I bore you with my stories of firefighting and EMS, read no further. I’ll address the social obligations in a different post.
I need to set up the story a bit. Steve (his real first name) is the town barber. If I was thinking clearer, I shoulda dubbed him Floyd since I live in Mayberry . He’s my age, as big as I am, and one of the top 10 nicest guys I’ve ever met. In his youth, he was a member of the Mayberry rescue squad, back in the days before there were national standards and certifications that had to meet Federal standards. He liked it so much that he spent 20 years or so in the Navy as a Corpsman (medic, for you landlubbers). The only thing keeping him in the class is the requirement for class hours before taking the tests. He could do it all from memory and experience.
Bubba Jr. is the teenaged daughter of the same Bubba from the DOA story from last week. She frequently comes to the station to hang out while her dad is doing stuff, and therefore she winds up as the victim when we practice our stuff. For you horndawgs, she’s even cuter than Vanessa, and that takes some doing.
In class, we are done with the bookwork, and now spend our time working scenarios, or taking real runs. Last night was scenarios, and Steve and Bubba Jr. were picked as the actors.
The call was for a woman bleeding from the mouth. I was part of a group of 5 responders, and we had to evaluate and treat the patient. We get to the scene, and there’s a young woman sitting very quietly and in pain, while the husband hovers over her.
It’s quite tough to do a scenario, because we go in larger groups, and there’s a tendency to want to stand around and pick your butt while you decide who does what. Signs and hints are much harder to pick up on when you’re pretending than in a real call.
One thing that is constantly beaten into our skulls is scene safety. This could be anything, from broken glass, hazardous materials, or humans. Being n00bs, we know the mantra, but most of the time when we do our scenarios, we ignore the signs. Like we did last night.
One woman in our group was designated the leader, precisely because she’s had no real life experience. We get to our victim, and she and I start working, while the rest stand back and pick their butts. Of course, we ignore the scene safety stuff, and try to work on our victim, Bubba Jr. The husband, Steve, is acting funny. He got in the way, he answered the questions we asked her, and was very agitated. She didn’t say anything but ouch when we found the theatric wounds. The warning bells should have gone off, but they didn’t.
I asked him several times to step back so we could work. I did a trauma check on the victim, and found a compound fracture. Bubba Jr. was wearing old clothes that we were told we could cut, so I started cutting one leg of her jeans to examine a spot. I found a compound fracture at the same time the leader found a back injury. We told the referee (the Chief, our instructor) that she was hurt badly enough that she needed to fly. At that point, the husband got to be a real PITA, and I noticed he had a clue by 4 handy. That’s when all those alarm bells I missed could no longer be ignored.
Husband: “She’s OK. She just fell and bit her tongue.”
Me: “Sir, please step back and let us work.”
The husband reaches down to that piece of 4X4 (IRL a piece of cribbing for stabilizing overturned vehicles), and I thought, this is not going to go well. I reached up and put the husband’s arm into a lock to take him down to the ground, a hapkido move I learned when I was in martial arts training.
Fortunately, Steve (the husband), knew enough of what I was doing, and went along with it. He gave up. I heard a 3rd actor announce that he was a deputy on scene, and he ‘cuffed’ the husband.
We splinted and backboarded the ‘victim’, and pretended to load her into the imaginary helicopter.
Then we had to endure the critique. We got points for our techniques, although I was docked some for assuming the bleeding from the compound leg fracture was more serious than the back injury, which was meant to be broken vertebrae. Then we got raked over the coals for the scene safety thing.
“What was really the problem?”
“Domestic abuse.”
“Did you consider that when you got there?”
“No.”
“It’s far too easy as new EMTs to take things at face value, which you did. What you should have done was to have someone take the husband away from the area and question him about the incident and her medical history. That would have defused the situation. Did you see the club he had with him?”
Me: “I did, just before I restrained him.”
The chief’s eyes lit up. “And ol’ Bob wrassles him to the ground…”
Me: “Ol’ Bob has a black belt.”
The chief turned to one of the oldtimers and said: “Kevin, write this down. He’s now going to be known forever as Black Belt Bob. Put it on his mailbox.” So let it be written, so let it be done.
He then told us that when Steve and Bubba Jr. were briefed, the intent was that the scenario was not to end well. The husband was supposed to go berserk and attack us all if we had not separated them like we were supposed to when we arrived, but didn’t count on hand-to-hand combat.
Good morning everybody! Time for coffee, then the dog park. It cloudy and cool right now, maybe I can do the day without running the A/C.
Rosie, banana Twinkies? I may have to try that.
So we’re to call you BBB now? Are you trying to one-up BB?
Bobbio, that story is hilarious. Black Belt Bob. Heh.
Someone Special, I’m doing all right; thanks for asking. Waiting for my passport, still haven’t started applying for my I-94. It’s been an insane two weeks, what with graduation and friends leaving and all. I STILL HAVE A PAPER TO TURN IN!!!1111!!11! And my kitchen is a mess because of course my brother is still being a lazy ass. ARGH.
I’ve been okay so far re: post-trauma. I still have random moments of fear on the street, but they’re getting less frequent.
Must hop off to work. Gah. Need more sleep! I think after this week I’ll be okay, though. I do start a new job next week (tutoring) but everything else in my life should have slowed down a bit by then.
Nah, I still like Bobbio…
BBB - too cool!
Wouldn’t take the relatives away be sort of SOP simply because of how much they get in the way? I’ve only had two kinds of emergency training where “make sure everybody else around you is also OK” was mentioned: for labs in college, and in airplanes. And yet, in pretty much every emergency situation where I’ve been there was one person panicking or on the verge of it. I’ve never needed to splint an arm, but being able to pull someone back from the edge of a nervous breakdown has come in handy quite often.
I’ve been listening to a lot of Johnny Cash lately. Every time “Springtime in Alaska” comes on I think of kai.
When I was on the call for the DOA last week, I was concerned because there was a gorilla of a guy freaking out, but he was out of the way and didn’t bother us any more than adding a lot of noise to a bad situation. That’s pretty typical for a regular call, medical or injury. I also ignored him because there was CPR to be done, and I had an airway to manage.
The husband in the scenario is pretty typical for an abuse call. If they get in the way, 9 times out of 10 the injuries are their doings.
Good morning, all!
I enjoy hearing about your training, Bobbio. It’s neat to see how other occupations are trained for their everyday work. It’s also interesting (and a little thrilling/scary) to hear about some of the crazier real life stories.
{{{Haze}}}
I’m making blueberry quickbread (or, as I call them, blueberry muffin bars) this morning; the best part about making them is getting to eat the raw batter that just won’t scrape out of the bowl while you’re filling up the containers to bake. Mmmmmm. I have an interview this afternoon for a library job. [sub]squee![/sub] It may only be part time and may only be for a shelving clerk position, but it’s a step into the world of “having library experience,” which is a major component of being eligible for a librarian position when I’m done with school. I hope it works out, as the guys I’m working with right now either assume I’m stupid or are a little weirded out by my interest in academic stuff. Well, that and my hobbies are a little too “weird” for them to chat with me about. (Who knew an interest in bonsai and intellectually stimulating books would put off a bunch of car salesmen?)
Oh, there go the muffins! I must ensure that they are yummy and good and not burned.
Up. Caffeinating. Still working off a sleep deficit. Tried to work on some of the mix last night but the lack of sleep engendered a lack of ambition, so I picked at it a bit and then let it be. I’ve got most of the main tracks laid down anyway, so other than a few more tracks, the rest of the actual composition, and some creative filigree here and there I should be on track for submission before the deadline.
Work’s been too damn busy, too, and my cow-orker isn’t making it any easier by putting his phone in away mode (so calls aren’t directed to him) for extended periods. I know he’s working on other things, and I’m the low man on the totem still, but sheesh!
I’ve got all the doors flung wide open at work, too, so I’ve got sunshine ("…on a cloudy day…") a wonderful breeze wandering through my office, ruffling all the pinned paperwork on my bulletin board. Most of the paint fumes vacated the premises yesterday but there’s still enough lingering about to warrant another such open-door day. But really, I just like the breeze.
Jah - Happy Birthday, Jah! Money is always a nice present.
BlackBeltBobbio - Great story. How do they simulate compound fractures and stuff? Do they actually go all Tom Savini with the latex appliances and fake blood and purplish bruise makeup and such, or is it all just sort of symbolized with a Sharpie or something?
Rosie - I hope they’re bringing the Banana cream back in addition to the vanilla instead of replacing it. Not that I eat Twinkies all that often, but I’m not a fan of artificial banana flavouring. And what the heck happened to the old spongy cake they used to make them with? Now it’s that light and fluffy cake they use with the 1/2 moons and such. Not that I’m complaining – I like 'em that way, actually – but I found it strange that they’d do that.
Special - That flier story reminds me of a George Carlin bit (paraphrased):
[sub]* I don’t know if Jack in the Box still exists; this bit was from back in the 80s at least. Substitute for Krystal or White Castle or other franchise as desired.[/sub]