Ok, so today was a day that reality really hit me as to how much of an impact this job can really have on someone's life.

I rarely get to see the calls that I dispatch, rarely get to interact with the people face to face, and never before have I have seen news footage of an incident that I was directly involved in -- until today.

I was covering part of day shift Thursday morning so the Fire Chief could conduct interviews when a call for a vehicle which had gone off the road into a creek came in.

I took the initial call, contacted the Sheriff's Dept and advised medical. Nothing unusual about that, happens every week. Roughly an hour and a half later, I'm looking through the local news stations website when I see a breaking story on a vehicle which had driven off a bridge.

The exact same call that I had dispatched less than 2 hours previous.

They posted a raw video appx. 5 hours later, and I don't know if this is a normal reaction, but I was literally moved to tears. It didn't show anything, but the woman survived and is listed in stable condition.

I guess it was just the emotional impact that you don't get by being removed from the situation.

But wow..it kinda hit me - not in a bad way, just emotionally. Doesn't happen often.

It's pretty awesome actually.

I've kinda come to the conclusion that I'm done with being the whole go-to girl at this dept. I guess I'm being petty, and maybe I should have never expected it to actually count for anything.

Ok, enough pity party :)

I'm currently babysitting a PI that evening shift brought in, this person is snoring, which is great because that makes it easy when I do visual checks every hour.

I'm resisting the urge to be busy and work on things that really aren't my job. I'm trying to not make this blog just a rant page, but sometimes it's really hard to do, so I'll move on to better topics :)

I've been running and working out in preparation for Reserve academy, with the goal of being able to meet the physical requirements of the Full-time academy. I really have no plans to ever become a fulltime officer, but I think it would be interesting to see if I can at least be able to someday.

So, I start off the basic aspect - the mile run. If I remember correctly, women's times is either 12 or 14 minutes, I'm not entirely sure. I started focusing on it roughly 1.5 weeks ago just to see what my times would be.

First time was 16:09, not bad felt like I was going to pass out. Second time was 3 days later, dropped it to 14:41, didn't feel quite so horrible. Third time was much better, 13:09, two days later. Finally, my last time was at roughly 2120 on Weds and I knocked it out. 11:41, got it under both 12 and 14 minutes. Needless to say, I'm pretty stoked about it. :)

It's had some awesome side effects as well, I've dropped appx 2 sizes and I'm running out of clothes to wear, guess I'll have to go shopping at some point, which also means my uniform pants are now too big as well as my favorite 511s. The Chief will be thrilled :))

So, it's been a crazy week.

I get to work on Wednesday and our newest dispatcher tells me that he's talked to the Chief who told him that if he could get it covered he could have thursday and friday off. Yay.

So, we (I) dutifully covered the shifts. Luckily, one of the firefighters was able to cover thursday, but our other dispatcher decided she couldn't work so guess who got to pull a double? :)

Oh well, it's ok and it's Friday.

I'm going to rant for a minute here, our other evening/night dispatcher has gotten to where's she really being a pain. the Chief wants her to go to fulltime, working 5 days a week and she doesn't want to. She wants to get her hours, but she wants to keep 4 days. I guess she's not able to recover in 2 days like everyone else...

So, I started reworking schedules..like I was told to do...adding her another day. Forgive me if I seem really unsympathetic lol, but here goes.

She would have to work 5 days, starting with a 0700-1500 on Friday, work 1500-2300 Sat and Sun, then work 2300-0700 Mon and Tues. She seems to think that there's not enough turnaround between Tues and Fri. Am I completely being hard to get along with?

She calls in sick -- a lot, takes off -- a lot and wants the schedule worked to fit her schedule. That's cool, I would love to be able to make my days off whenever and screw everyone else, but I'm doing my best to get people hired and make the schedule fair.

She's completely set on working 4 days a week and going to 12 hr shifts or 10s whichever. I wrote up a schedule with her working 10s, overlapping on the evening shift when she works nights, because that's the busiest shift. That's not working for her, she thinks the nights are busiest-- believe me they ain't. Yeah we get weirder calls and a lot of bs...but by far not the busiest.

Ok, i think I'm done ranting, but it's still a pain in the ass.

Post Song: Francesca Battistelli - Beautiful, Beautiful