Maren's New Job at 911 Dispatch!

Hello Everybody! It has been a long time since I have updated but I finally got a few pictures of the people I have been training with and thought it was about time I let you all know of my new job up at dispatch. So, here we go! This is my training group that I spent four weeks with seven days a week eight hours a day. From bottom row to top we have Dan, Jannelle, Robert, Me, Ashley, Lindsi, Justin, and the one between Lindsi and Robert is Jaram.

A lot of these pictures are from when we went to the fire station. I absolutely love my job and have become very attached to quite a few of the people there. It is high stress and you won't believe some of the stuff that goes on in your own backyard! I have about 5 more weeks of training before I have my solo evaluation, and depending on if that goes good (which I am sure it will) will determine my regular hours and days off. I am training right now with Emilee and she is absolutely amazing! We get along great! But then again, being with a person for more than 40 hours a week can do that to ya...:) I really do love her and she helps make work all the better! I am also very fond of vint... although he can have quite the mouth sometimes! They are all great people and have made me fit right in. Training is hard.. but right now Emilee just feeds me all the lines and tells me exactly what to type... I am slowly but surely catching on!

This is me, ashely, and Lindsi inside of the ambulance. It was funny because the first time I got in it I layed all the way down on the stretcher and before I knew it the fireman guy giving us the tour was looking down on me and said, "Now, I hope this is the only time I ever see you in an ambulance.." It was super funny but we all hope the same thing! Sadly though, Lindsi quit the first day she was supposed to go in. It wasn't working out with her little boy Hunter and it was just for the better. I miss her like crazy though! We would all call her "mom" because she had that motherly figure about her and was always willing to help with everything and listen to everybodys problems! We miss you Lindsi!

For dispatch, I got my own little headset! Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of that. But it's pretty neat, it fits right into my left ear and fits in such a way that I can't hear anything but the person talking to me over the phone. The headset part that goes in my ear is green and it is the complete shape of my ear! Pretty neat! At my desk I have four different computer screens in front of me...One is my VESTA and ANI ALI screen which is how we message back and forth to each other and which also brings up the peoples phone number, name, and address up when they call in, as long as they aren't calling from a cell phone. If you call from a cell phone all that shows up now is just your number and your provider... but we are working on what is called a Phase 2 where it will appear just as it does for those using a landline.

The dispatch center is called Valley Emergency Communications Center and is located just after the intersection of 5600 and 5400 on your right hand side. It has great big huge windows that we look out to see fires and such things and has all sorts of towers and satelites surrounding it, you can't miss it if you ever go looking for it. The golf course is right next door to us if that helps any of you with figuring out the location.

One of the things I was really excited about for the job was the little badge that we get that has our name and picture on it, our badge number, and a little magnetic computer chip thing inside of it that opens up all the doors and the main gate for the building. In the break room we also have a huge soda fountain macheine that has both Pepsi and Coca Cola products. The other day, Robert made us a whole chicken for lunch! He deboned it and everything in that little break room kitchen! Deboned it, put it in the oven, and served it up! If there is one thing about the dispatch center it's that we love to eat! Everybody brings snacks and it's all up for grabs! One of their favorites I have noticed is Cafe Rio... athought it's not my first pick, nor my favorite, I do not mind their salads and am getting used to them....

Like I was saying before, work can be very draining and I very much look forward to my weekend days where I get to sleep in, but I absolutely love every minute of being at work and am so glad that I finally found something for me. Work offers full benefits on everything, I'm covered in health insurance and I get retirement stuff. The enviornment is good, and if we have an earthquake, and I'm at work, I will be saved because our building is earthquake proof so that we can take your guys calls!

Other than dispatch things have been good. Just taking it easy and living life as a partial adult :) Me and Kristen have been hangin' out a lot more lately and it seems that our favorite thing to do is watch Secret Life of the American Teenager and eat chinese food from Sam Pan! Luckily not all of her time is spent with Danny :) at least, not for another year or so!

I hope all of you are doing well and hopefully I won't wait so long to update again!

Nathan's First B-day

I think I am the first to blog about Nathan's Birthday, sorry Kins, but it just had to be done.

Mandy threw a smashing party, much to our shock from the small amount of details we were given.. more like dragged out of her. Her cake was delicious and moist, and looked great too. Nathan knows all about solid foods so when he got his cupcake, he licked the frosting just to check it out and then bit into it like it was an apple! He's no fool, he knows the good stuff when he sees it. I was proud with the present I got him, I was bias and only put in the pic of him opening my present. He got a lot of cute clothes. I can't believe he is one already! It seems like just last week i was waiting in the hallway of the hospital almost half asleep waiting to see my first nephew. I love my squishes to death! (that's nathan ps)

Creative Cooks

Every weekend Danny and I have a date. This can be very expensive. Since we are both in school and we both work minimal amounts we decided we needed to find ways to save each other money. One way has been to cut out going to restaurants as often as we were. Obviously we are still hungry, just because you have no money doesn't mean you don't get hungry! And everyone that knows me knows that I eat a lot.... even Danny is shocked sometimes :) Anyway, for the past like month and a half we have been cooking our own dinners. We have made pizza,ham and cheese hot pockets and buffalo chicken tacos. The pizza is his favorite and he says he prefers it over dominos any day. After making it the first time,which is the pics I have posted, we fixed somethings... the dough for instance, the first time we made it we used a pizza crust packet who knows how long Rosanne had it in her basement, but it didn't spread very easily and it didn't raise up like crust is supposed to, so it was like a cracker. The next time we made it, we used Rhodes loaves which worked spectacularly, it raised and was golden brown. It was soft,yet crunchy. Glad to say it was satisfying. 

As you can see in the picture Danny got very involved and looks like a 5 yr old with the flour on his face :) Good thing he doesn't read my blog!
  The hot pockets were my favorite, this was a....(I don't think you can call it a recipe,but a way to organize ingrediants) but you take cressent rolls and you fill them with cut up ham and shredded cheese, I personally don't like deli sliced ham in things like this, I would rather thick chunks of ham that you can acutally chew on and it doesn't leave behind all the juice, so we found exactly that, a thick slice of ham all packaged just waiting for me. We used honey baked ham, which was actually quite delicous and not disgusting at all... then you rub some egg over the top of them so that they brown, pop them in the oven on 350 and wait about 15 min. 

 

New Years

For New Years Danny and I got free tickets to First Night. We went last year and it was so cold that I didn't think I would be up to do it again, but I went prepared this time. I wore a turtle-neck a sweater vest, and my winter coat, with a scarf, two pairs of gloves and a beanie. We also went later. We enjoyed fondu with his family then went bowling. Orginally we had planned on bowling just 2 games, but since I beat him at both he felt the need to bowl just one more:) 

First Night was all about recycling and reusing. In one of the pictures Danny is standing next to a giant ball made from waterbottles.... we also saw a tunnel made of 2x4's that they called a marriage tunnel... I don't know exactly what it meant, but we walked through...Does that mean we are married now??? Anyway, the entertainment there was dj's that mixed...I couldn't really tell, and also some really cool fire dancing.

Interpreting

Just thought I would update you all on my schooling. Tomorrow is our last day, I am very excited to move on from learning vocabulary. It is important but can be very boring 90% of the time. Last monday we learned signs for body parts....All body parts, arms, legs, fingers, breasts, penis, vagina butt, collar bone. We also learned the body systems and signed them for the class in pairs. There was circulatory, respiratory, muscular/nervous, reproductive and skeletal. Of course with my luck I got reproductive and was paired with a woman who was divorced and so embarrassed that we had picked that card. I let her explain the man and I described the woman and the process of getting pregnant. I signed..."The woman has a vagina. She has a uterus, and ovaries and falopian tubes. Once a month,every month, an egg drops from an ovary into the falopian tube and when it reaches the uterus it has one day for the sperm and egg to meet for a conception. If this does not occur the egg drops and you bleed" Luckily the public school systems teaches all of this so I was not uncomfortable explaining this and I knew what i was talking about :)

I was also offered an intership to sign for the coaches for the Utah School for the Deaf and Blind (USDB). I am very excited to get out into the field. I was also very pleased that Jeff, he is the man over the interpreting program at DATC and got me the internship, thought I was skilled to take on this at the level of education I am at. 

The first time I went to the Deaf Center,this is where my internship is which is very nice because it is only in Taylorsville, much closer than my school,but the USDB was playing Skyline and Kyle Korver's little brother is on Skyline's team, Korver plays for the Utah Jazz which I found I had to explain to everyone i told. Korver has the highest percentage of 3 pointers in the NBA, and the most attractive player we have. He is similar to Ashton Kutcher. I watch the games with Danny just so I can see Kyle play:)

Christmas Treats

I decided to make caramel and chocolate dipped pretzles and apples to give to Rae and Danny's families. It was very quick and I had a lot of fun doing it. First i dipped them in the caramel, which you have to unwrap 50 individual squares of caramels....A little time consuming... You have to wait for the caramel to cool so that more will stick to what you are dipping, if you do it right when it has reached the liquid consistancy it will all slide off and you will be sad when you bite into that pretzle or apple. Once those harden you put on the chocolate. I found that the candy making chocolate did well, but i prefer the chocolate that you put into a chocolate fountain. You must wait until the chocolate has cooled other wise it will melt the caramel and make it gooey. There are many different things you can put on top, white chocolate, an assortmment of candies, toffee... I chose the white chocolate and just drizzled it with a fork, agian the cooling rule apples.

The Flat

A few weeks ago Maren had a flat tire and was at work. I was also at work and asked if i could fill it for her because i didn't like the idea of her driving on a flat because that will cause the tire to rip or the rim to bend... No good can come from it. So I drove over to her car down to the 7-11 and went to fill the tire. As i have the air hose pressed against the nozzle I hear the air coming out and see no signs of it filling. I loook to my right and notice the huge hole in the tire. I begin to think of ways that i can remedy this... I wasn't sure if Maren had a spare tire so i thought i could just put mine on. I am frantically texting Jordan because I don't know what to do. I have no idea how to change a tire... Jordan did not like hearing that and rushed over to help me. We discussed the probable causes of putting my spare onto her car. With much fuss we discovered that my tire was too small and that Maren actually had a spare tire in her trunk. She did end up having to buy a new tire but she bought a little bit of time with her spare.