Sorry, still no pictures

I've really got to work on remembering the camera one of these days.  The big news is that Simon starts kindergarten tomorrow morning.  Kindergarten here is all day long, he gets on the bus at 0727, and gets off the bus at 229.  He's pretty excited, he got a new backpack and a lunchbox to take to school, and he's been trying to convince us to put a lunch in it everyday since Faith brought it home.  Dylan starts preschool on the 8th, he'll just be gone half a day.  Faith's looking forward to having some to herself.  Simon and I went and played golf this morning.  We walked again, but I think that will be the last time until he's older.  He got mad at me because I wouldn't let him stop and look at every tree we came across.  I'm taking Dylan to play on Tuesday while Simon's at school.  Faith wanted to go shopping today, which I didn't want to do, and I don't think she wanted me complaining all day.  She couldn't find any of her friends to go with her, so she went by herself.  Me and the boys are hanging out at home, as Faith bailed with Dylan's car seat, so we're stuck.  We did buy them a Slip-N-Slide last week, so maybe I'll get some photos of that.  Not much else is going on.  I still haven't gotten my official job offer yet, my boss told me last Friday that the District Ranger, she's the head boss of the whole district, forgot to send the message to our HR people that they had selected me for the job, so she sent it on Friday, and it takes a couple of weeks to get it all processed.  Holding strong at 216th still, I suppose.  Hope everybody's doing well.

I actually got both my days off this weekend, which was kind of a strange feeling in August. Our friend Ken came up from Portland on his way to Canada and spent a day hanging out. We went and panned for gold then went and shot some guns. Here's Simon shooting a real gun for his first time. Well, this video is the third or fourth time he shot the .22 that day. It was pretty funny, towards the end of the day he had a really hard time working the action on the gun and holding it up. He had a huge ear to ear grin on his face the whole time. He also shot my .45 with me holding it, but I think it kicked so much it kind of freaked him out, he only did one shot with that, so there's no video. Dylan had been sick, so he didn't get to come with us. Sunday was the first day he didn't have a fever, and Faith wanted him to stay home and rest instead of playing in the creek. Sissy. Nevermind, the video wouldn't load. I'll try to load it later.

On my next day off Ken left early in the morning to head to Canada, Simon and I went and played some golf. We played nine holes and walked, which Simon did not want to do, he wanted to get a cart again, but Faith found me a pushcart at a garage sale that I wanted to try out. I only had to give him two shoulder rides, he walked the rest of it. I can remember when I was a kid Dad always telling me to hurry up, or to keep up, or to quit looking at stuff and walk, and I think Simon must be God's way of showing me how patient Dad was, because holy crap, that boy walks slower than a herd of turtles stampeding through peanut butter. He stops and looks at everything, and I swear that he is incapable of walking and talking at the same time, and he talks constantly. After golf we went home and grabbed Dylan and went up to another creek so I could try panning for gold again, which I apparently do not know how to do. I found a few flakes, but I looked on the internet for some videos on how to do it and I was doing it all wrong. I guess doing things like how I see it in movies isn't always the best. I gave the boys each a knife to carve on sticks and Simon stabbed himself in the arm once, then Dylan stabbed Simon once. Simon stabbed himself by holding onto a log and trying to stab it and missed. Dylan stabbed Simon cause Simon splashed him with water. Just kidding, they were "fighting leaves", which I heard them say they were going to do, and didn't click right away what that might entail, so I didn't stop it until I looked up and saw them wildly stabbing plant leaves with the knives, and before I could stop them one wild swing got Simon in the arm. Luckily neither of them are strong enough to put a lot of force into it, and the knives were just old leatherman tools I had, which don't have the sharpest points on them, so both wounds were pretty minor. Faith opted to spend some time by herself, so she missed all the fun. That's about it. Hope everybody's doing well.

I'm home.

Well, I'm home now.  I got home this afternoon.  I went to the Umpqua National Forest in western Oregon.  This is the 3rd time I've been to that forest, once in 2002, last year, then this year.  Those three experiences have taught me that I hate that forest.  Here's why:  That place is about 1,000 times as steep as it needs to be.  I'm serious, I think it's the steepest place I've ever been.  Northern California is pretty steep, but the Umpqua is steeper.  The second fire I went to we parked on the road then hiked down to the fire.  We dropped 500 feet in .18 miles, worked on the fire all day, then had to hike back out.  Sometimes it's fun to hike on really steep fires, but when you take three steps forward then slide back 2.9 steps cause the dirt is all loose it ceases to be fun.  One of the fires they had to leave 4 foot tall stumps in the middle of the fireline so you could grab onto something while you pulled yourself up the hill.  Ri-goshdarn-diculous.  Other than that it was a pretty fun fire.  It was 38 small-medium sized fires scattered over about 40 square miles.  It rained the first two days I was there, then they kept trying to stick me in staging to wait for new fires, but I'm pretty good at finding work for myself in some capacity, so I only had to sit in staging for 2 days instead of 7 like they had planned.  Oh yeah, the best part of the fire was when I got offered a new job the day I got there.  I accepted the Assistant Fire Management Officer job in Republic.  It's the job I've been doing for a year, but now they'll start paying me for it, which will be nice, I'll be a GS-8 for about 8 months which is about a $1.20 an hour raise, then I'll be a GS-9 after that, which is another at least $1.00 raise.  Hooray me!!  The only downside is that we'll be staying in Republic for a while now.  Hope everybody's doing well.  See ya.

Hi everyone. There won't be any new posts for awhile. I've got a job interview at 1030, then I'm heading for the Tiller Complex in Western Oregon. Hope everybody's doing well. See you later.

Simon and I went and played golf on my last day off. He dressed himself. We had a good time, after golf we went and met Faith and Dylan for lunch, then went to a little swimming pool in the park in Colville. It's only about 2.5 feet deep at it's deepest part, and it's free, so it works out pretty well. Here's some video Simon:

Not much else is going on. I've been working alot, and Faith's been taking the boys to the river pretty regularly. I talked to the FMO about the job in Idaho City I applied for, and he said that I had a good application and good experience, but that I was on the lower half of the selection list because most of the other applicants were already AFMO's with more experience than me. He said there was even a FMO on the list that wanted to take a pay cut to move there. Oh well. I was told that I would get an interview for the AFMO job here in Republic on Friday, but it never happened, and the FMO won't be back to work until next Thursday, and I become available for fire assignments on Monday and will hopefully leave, so I don't have a lot of hope that any decisions will be made soon on that one. The Idaho City job will make a decision early next week, and that job colsed July 10th. The AFMO job here closed in the middle of May, and I bet it'll be September before they make a job offer. Remember when I said the Forest Service was ranked 216th in employee satisfaction out of like 230 federal agencies. More proof right there. Hope everybody's doing well.