Chief Victor Days!

Well, the big excitement around here has been Chief Victor Days, held 12-13 Jun. On Friday night, Dad and Mom dressed up in "official" Victor Fire Dept "dress blues" (a little different from the Air Force - it's a blue shirt and your jeans with the most blue in them) for the big Spagetti Dinner fundraiser. They did pretty good - lots of very generous folks in Victor!

Then on Saturday, Dad got to drive one of the big fire trucks in the parade - Mom had to work - and boy, was he excited about that. Mom told him he should bring us along for the ride, but he thought we might bark too much. He's probably right.

Mom and Dad have been doing a lot with the fire department for training too. They got to practice on a fake propane fire simulator, and a simulated house fire using the State of Montana "Smoke Shack". The Smoke Shack is a series of three metal rooms built into a semi-trailer that you put excelsior into and light it on fire - it's pretty hot! We should get some pictures of that next time I post.

Dad's been experimenting with reloading ammunition for his .357s - so far, he's been successful in not blowing the house up, or blowing up a gun, so it seems to be going pretty good. Mom continues to train for her half marathon - it's next week - and she's really not ready, but she's planning on walking a lot, so it should be OK. I continue to hate Schultz, and Schultz continues to get fatter, no matter what Mom and Dad do - he'll eat ANYTHING, including spent primers Dad carved out of the old fired brass he uses for reloading. He's such an idiot - I don't understand why they don't send him baaaaccck!

Long Time No Type!

I'm sorry it's been so long since I updated my blog - Mom has been really busy with two jobs and Dad has been working way too much too! And the fire department is taking a lot of their time as well - which makes me very unhappy, because then I'm stuck all day with Blockhead, I mean Schultz, and he tries to push me out of my favorite place to sleep right by the door.

Dad has been working at the Meat and Fish counter at lot more than he wanted to - the owners are nice folks, but they're having a hard time finding good people, so Dad ends up working a lot. Mom has been working in the Produce department, which she likes because she is not only busy, but also gets her workout in - canteloupes and corn are heavy! She's also been working for the Census Bureau doing address canvassing, which means she drives or walks around and checks every house address in her assigned area. She enjoyed doing this until last week, when a little blue cattle dog bit her on the back of the calf! Don't worry - the dog had its shots, and it's healing nicely, although she may have a scar for a while. Needless to say, Mom is very glad this part of the Census is over, and she has absolutely no desire to work any further phases. Produce is safer - it doesn't bite!

Mom and Dad have done a lot of training with the Fire Dept - they spent a whole day learning how to extricate people from wrecked cars, using all kinds of tools, including the tools commonly referred to as the "jaws of life" and they went to a whole weekend of wildland fire training put on by the state. Don't worry, Dad and Mom have no intention of being on the front lines of any major wildfires, but they need to have the basic qualifications to be safe.

They've gone on quite a few calls with the fire dept - a lot of them are medical calls and their early military training as cadets is coming in handy, since getting to the patients and then getting the patient out of their house and to the ambulance can be very challenging sometimes - it's very much like Project X/Leadership Reaction Course for those of you who know what that is. "OK, we've got a 300lb patient in a bathtub with a broken leg - we've got to get them on to a backboard, then go down a narrow hallway with three 90 degree turns, then down an outside stairway and a narrow, icy driveway, all while keeping the patient secure and level." Like I said, challenging!

We have gone hiking a couple of times since I last wrote. Once just up Bear Creek, which is near our house, and once in the Lost Horse area. We were going to hike to a lake in Lost Horse, but they haven't opened the road all the way yet, so we just hiked up the road. Here's some pictures from those hikes.

We've also been running a lot with Mom - she's training for the Lolo Pass half marathon on 27 Jun. Her training got delayed a little by the dog bite, but we're up to 8.5 miles now! Mom plans on walking a lot since she really hasn't had the time to train as much as she should.

Well, that's all the news for now - I'll try to update this more often now that Mom isn't working two jobs. I need opposable thumbs - of course, then Schultz would be bugging me to use the can opener, so maybe it's just as well - he's too fat!