Cycles

Been a while since my last post. Seems like not a lot to write, but it's actually been quite busy.

On the FD front, I've run quite a few interesting calls lately. I am always amazed at how cyclical things are in the EMS world. It seems like one week, we can do no wrong, and the next week, we can't save anyone if our lives (or theirs) depended on it. A few weeks ago, we must have airlifted 7 people in 3 days, and the next week we had one single helicopter. Then we had a full arrest where the guy was brought back after two minutes of CPR and had a new heart valve and internal AED a week later, and was calling us to say thanks. The next week was a gunshot suicide, a 16-year-old DOA, and an acute MI. How or why I don't know, but it just seems to go that way.

Kathryn always thinks it's so odd that I come home from a full arrest (or whatever) and just sit right back down to my lunch like nothing happened. It's not that I don't care, it's just that there's a certain level of detachment that happens over time. There are the really intense incidents, like the one in my last post, that take some work to get past. But the average human death, as bad as it sounds, is pretty normal and OK. I guess it's just that I've accepted the fact that our existence is defined by the bookends of birth and death--after all, those are the only two things in our lives that we truly have no choice about. So when someone dies, I find myself with various emotions depending on the circumstances. I clearly feel more sadness when an infant dies than when a 95-year-old does, but I am always inspired as I look around at 5 or 10 or 15 of my fellow EMTs or paramedics, and realize that we are all there for a single purpose, which is to change the course of this one single person's life. It is a very humbling and beautiful thing, and for me it defines the best that is within us. I guess it is something of an honor to be present at such an intimate moment in another's life, and I also know that that person had the best possible chance because someone called 911.

In other news, I am working towards a two-week trip on my old BMW motorcycle. It's a 1972 model R75/5, and I've been going through the front end for a couple of weeks now. Some problems were exposed by something else I was doing, and I'm now working on bringing the front forks into parallel. At last check, I had them to .001" out, and up to .004" is allowable. Something about working in such fine tolerances and with a refined eye appeals to me--order in an otherwise chaotic existence, maybe? The forks are resting now, so we'll see whether they spring back out of alignment or not. Having this work as a distraction lately has been a blessing. I am taking the trip with the stated goal of working towards "what I want to be when I grow up". And as a break from the kids. I don't get much of that alone time. My plan is to start in Vancouver, B.C. and spend the first 36 hours doing an Iron Butt Association ride to Tijuana, Mexico: Border to Border Madness
After that, it will just be a leisurely scoot across the south to Las Cruces or so, and I'll head north to Santa Fe to meet up with a buddy for hot springs and some local rides. Next stop will be Denver, so I can sit with my friend for one of her rounds of chemo, and I'll stay in town to celebrate my birthday. From there, I'm thinking maybe up to Mt. Rushmore, and across the north via Coeur d' Alene, Idaho and back to Seattle. I am very much looking forward to it.

Lastly, and totally unrelated...
I hate blue M&M's. Ever since their introduction. Whenever I open a new XXL 52 ounce bag of peanut M&M's, I look in and all I see is blue. There are just too many of them. On the M&M's website (M&Ms), they tell you the proportions of each product. For peanut, it goes like this:
Blue: 23%
Orange: 23%
Green: 15%
Yellow: 15%
Brown: 12%
Red: 12%
Well, earlier this week I opened a new bag and, as usual, muttered, "Fucking blue m&m's." So, in a fit of Jack Nicholson-like OCD, I grabbed six bowls and a kitchen scale, and set out to de-bunk the m&m's conspiracy. I sorted, counted and weighed the entire bag, and made an Excel spreadsheet to record my results. Though the numbers weren't exact, they were pretty darn close to the website claims. So my theory is this: since orange and blue are the two most recent additions to the m&m's lineup, I would be willing to bet a small bag of my favorite candy-covered chocolate-and-peanut delight that the blue dye and the orange dye are cheaper than the other colors. I mean COME ON, everyone loves green!!! So why make blue and orange almost HALF of every bag?

Do note the glass of beer to the right of the picture...

Marci said, "Don't worry, the nice lady in white will be along shortly to give you some happy candy."

Ronan said, "Daddy, why are your m&m's in bowls?"

I guess this all proves one thing: I need to get out more.