The Command Center 

For many years I was a full time fireman. There, I drove engines, worked on truck companies, ran inmate hand crews, And worked in the dispatch center. The dispatch center I worked in for 6 years had two agencies in it: CalFire, and the Forest Service. In 2009 I retired from full time on the CalFire side, got up, walked across the room, and sat down on the Forest Service side to work "on call". Counting this year, in which I have already worked a bit, I will have been on the federal side for 18 years. All told, at the end of this fire season I will have been in the command center for 24 years. I worked in there yesterday, and at one point I walked through the entire building, and I thought, "From the time I first came to work for CalFire, through today, I have walked these halls for nearly 40 years."  

During that time I have seen a great many changes. For one, the layout of the center has totally changed. When I first went there all the stations were in a "U" shaped counter space, and we (state and federal) faced each other. This made it very easy to talk back and forth during incidents, and that was nice. Now it's laid out so we all face the walls, and it's nowhere near as good for interactions. In the early days we had 4 computer screens...1 phone screen, 2 CAD (computer aided dispatch) screens, and 1 radio screen...now we have 8 screens. We've gone through 2 completely different CAD systems, and three different resource tracking systems. A few years ago the center added EMD (Emergency Medical Dispatch), which is a structured system of prehospital instructions we go through with medical dispatches that sometimes mean the difference between life and death outcomes. Now the CAD system "talks" to the resource tracking system, we have computerized aircraft tracking, and things have become much more complex. It's been quite the evolution to observe.  

Before I first went in, and for several years after, our side (CalFire had a total of three Captains to do the work, only one of which stayed at night. Now there are 5 Captains, and 4 Com-Ops, fully qualified dispatchers, but under the Captains for supervision. The Forest Service side has always maintained 7 dispatchers, plus 3 supervisors. At night there is always 1 CalFire Com-Op on duty, and 1 Captain on duty but sleeping. That person gets awakened in the event of fires of complicated incidents. That makes a great deal of difference in the amount of sleep the Captain can expect to get. Before the Com-Ops came to be, I can remember working a 4 day shift (24 hrs/day) and I got a total of 7 hours of sleep. That was a rough week. 

I think for now I'll end this post as an "introduction" to dispatch, and in the next post I'll go into more detail, and maybe even some "war stories". 

 More garden stuff

I had three projects in mind to finish yesterday: hang the wire fencing around the old berry patch, build/hang a gate for the new berry patch enclosure, and build/hang a gate for the old berry patch enclosure. However, the afternoon thunderstorms had other ideas, and they only allowed me to finish two of the three. My goal today will be to build the gate for the old berry enclosure, and if the weather isn't bad, hang that one. I may also be able to devise latches for the 2 new gates. I also still need to put the clips on the fencing for the new enclosure, but since that's 100% out in the open, the rain would need to give me a break, and I don't know if that's on it's "to do" list. 

I'm very thankful for the rain we're getting right now. It's been pretty dry, and with all the new planting this moisture comes at a great time. I'm not really a lazy person, but if God wants to help me water, I'm all for it. We're playing music next week at an assisted living center, so we need to pick an hour worth of songs today and start going over them. From that gig we'll make almost enough money to pay for a dinner out, but the dollars won't be the important part of that day: we just want those folks to have a time of decent music, so there we are. Someday I might be sitting in their chair, and I'd hope somebody would do the same for me. 

 

After all the work is done, I may end the same as I did yesterday.

 Working outside

The last couple days I've been hitting it hard outside working in the "berry department". We're putting in a lot of various berries, and also trying to work on structures to keep the deer out of them. Being old and fat isn't really in my best interest when it comes to working long hours. Whereas in the past 10-12 hour days were no issue, now I'm about all done in after 7-8. At 67 years old I just can't do as much as I did when I was 37. I understand the dynamics of that, but it still irritates me. 

Yesterday I bought 7 small cedar planter boxes off Facebook Marketplace, and I
started out this morning by putting the first coat of stain/sealer on them. I'll put one more coat of that on them, and then I'll apply a couple coats of clear waterproofing finish. These boxes are 15 inches by 15 inches, so not large, but they'll just be used for flowers to add some color around here, and that size should work great. Some folks wouldn't bother with the stain and finish, but I feel if a job is worth doing, it's worth doing right. Since the guy was just getting rid of them, I only paid $10/ea, but I still want them to last as long as possible. So, if I put some effort into the front end of the project, it should pay off for a long time at the back end of the project. 

After I did the boxes, I concreted in a couple of pressure treated posts to extend the fencing of one of the berry areas. Weather permitting, tomorrow I'll string the welding wife fencing around them, and at that point it'll be time to build a gate. When our son-in-laws were here this weekend I got them to help me string so 6ft tall welded wire fencing around posts I had already installed, and that will enclose berry area #2. I have the materials to build that gate, so maybe an hour's worth of work will finish that off. 

Additionally, I planted 22 various berry bushes today: huckleberry, lingdon berry,
blueberry, and raspberry. Oh yeah, in my spare time I relocated 2 thornless blackberries, 6 strawberries, and 3 lemon balms.  The nice thing is we have great soil, so the digging isn't difficult. Lots and lots of work, but eventually it'll pay off with lots of yummy things to eat. 

 More pickin'

Yesterday was our monthly jam here at the house. Sunny, blue skies, upper 70's, lots of pickers, and lots of grinners. We even had our 15 year old granddaughter join in, which made it even better. We're hosting this jam the first Saturday of each month, and having had three of them so far, I'd say it becoming a popular option for folks. The first jam was inside due to weather, and we had 17 people. Both the next two gathering have been outside, and we've had 40 people at each of those. We're hoping to keep this thing growing until our whole place is packed with folks playing, and folks listening. Having a musical sanctuary for us backwoods type folks has been a dream of ours for a long time, and now that we've got the perfect setup for it, we're moving ahead at full speed. We'll keep holding these events the first Saturday of each month, and they are open to anybody, so if you're in the Grants Pass, Oregon area then, please do stop by and join us.  

 The cost of doing business

I'm sure everybody has noticed the cost of most everything has risen greatly in recent years. Many reasons for that, not just any one in particular, and it's something we have to find a way to deal with. Fuel will drop eventually, always does, but it seems like the cost of food and general goods never returns to previous lows, so coping will be a long term road. Why it's happened, or why we "think" it's happened is relatively unimportant, learning to live with it, and discovering how to thrive in spite of it, is far more important. And, sometimes what you perceive to be a thorn in your side, is actually a blessing in disguise. 

The diesel prices here in our new town are currently $5.99 - $6.09 a gallon, while the price in our old Montana town is at $4.78. In Montana our place was pretty much done, and that left me with a considerable amount of free time to do other things. Our house was 5 miles out of town, so if I needed anything it was a minimum of a 10 mile round trip to get there, and the first half mile was over what was always a horrible wash boarded dirt road, and that caused a great deal of wear and tear over time. At our new Oregon location there is a never ended supply of projects to do in order to bring the house and property back up to what we consider to be a respectable condition. The work elves have been on strike, so that means my happy butt gets to do the work, and as slow as I move these days, projects take quite some time to finish. That means I'm at the house working all the time.

The other side of the coin here is our location, and the close proximity to cheaper  goods than we had in Montana. Our house sits about 2 miles from Winco, Costco, and other places to buy things. In Montana, our tiny town of 850 people had a really nice store, and I was always very thankful for it, but obviously the food was more expensive. We had a good hardware store, and a good lumber yard, but if you wanted/needed much else, it required a trip to Bozeman, and that was an hour away. The closeness of everything means far shorter, and much quicker, trips to get anything. We went to Winco yesterday and did a bunch of shopping. We completely restocked the pantry/kitchen, spent under $300, and were there and back in under an hour. Since much of my time is occupied working on the house, I'm doing far less driving, and I believe that last time I put fuel in the tank was over 3 weeks ago: since then I've used less than 1/2 tank of fuel. All of that together means I've spent less money overall.

Now, don't think that I'm all rainbows and unicorns about this...I struggle with the thought of being in Oregon, rather than Montana, on a daily basis. All I'm doing is trying to "look at the bright side" of things and understand that, "Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus." It's what I have to hold on to right now, so that's what I'll do, and I'll continue to "hope to cope". We'll see.