Month in Review

It has been a while- we have been pretty busy. Here are just a few reflections from November.

Golf season is now over. I played my last few rounds on Nov. 11- shot 97- not the way I wanted to finish out the year, but I did sink a 25ft put on the last hole. The last six weeks of the season I was driving the ball well, so I rewarded myself with a new Nike SQ driver- WOW love it! The longest drive I had was about 310 w/my old driver. Now the mark is 327. It is a bigger club and the consistancy isn't quite there yet, but I think it's a winner. Every once and a while I have a nasty hook. If you hit the ball 175 out, and it hooks left 100 yards, does it still count as a 275yd drive? By the way, as soon as I really got my drives going, my short game went to hell. Drive for show, putt for dough- how true. Enough about golf.
Football. I decided that since I only made it one Hawkeye game this year I would make plans for my wife and I to fly out for a bowl game, and then came Western Michigan. Are you kidding me? I could really go on and on about this season, but I have spent the past few weeks getting over it and don't want drag up all of those feelings I have burried deep down inside. At least Tampa Bay is having an alright season, they should lock up the division this weekend. Unless they step it up, they won't make it far in the playoffs. Tampa did sweep the Saints this year, not to rub it in to any one particular Aints fan that might be reading this.
The fire dept. has been very busy. We have 5 new guys that started just a few weeks before firefighter I class started, so I tried to make it my priority to give them the basics before classes started so they wouldn't be going in blind. They all tested last week, and everthing sounds like it turned out well. We recieved our new bunker gear a few weeks ago. The money for this gear was obtained from a FEMA grant, which was written by myself and another member of the dept. This is the second grant we have gotten in the past 4 years, combined, these grants have brought in around $90,000 to our dept. It is one of the things I am very proud of.
Work has been way too busy, a lot of things have been going on, but for some reason I really don't even feel like talking about any of it. Winter is our busy season.
Now, the best for last. Dylan has been doing very well. He has the eating game down. We don't really notice how much he has grown, until we go back and look at pics from his first week. It's hard to list all of the differences between wk 1 and wk 6.
he holds his head up on his own, has a strong grip, and has been toying around with all kinds of facial expressions. He is just starting to smile on purpose and he follows voices- that is pretty cool, it is actual interaction. This afternoon I put him on the floor and we worked on rolling over. He actually was doing well and getting it, but after about 30 min. just got too tired. He could sleep for longer periods, 2 hrs. is about usual, sometimes longer. I think the record is a little over4. We have been trying hard to stick to a regular routine, and that seems to be helping. I think that I have been doing alright with sharing the diaper responsibilities, I don't know what Chrissy would say about that. Speaking of diapers- it came to my attention that a cousin of mine seemed to have a problem with me calling Dylan a little poop maker. Anytime you want to come over and baby sit, let me know, I will give you directions, and show you where the baby wipes are!
Chrissy has been holding up very well and is a great mom. I think she doeslike getting out of the house, if only for a short amount of time- just to get back into the regular world again, not baby world. There are some days when I get home from work, walk in the door and immediatly know it was a bad day without a word spoken from either of us. Otherwise things have been pretty good.

No Christmas lights outside this year. About 80% of the outside lights I pulled out and tested didn't work this year. Call me Scrooge, but I gave it up this year. We are on the end of a dead end street, and there is only one other house one the street w/ lights. After a conversation w/ my nieghbor a few houses down, we both decided to let it go to the dismay of our families. I put the tree up the day after Thanksgiving, and finally got the ornaments on today, sad.

After recieving a few complaints, I figured out how to change the settings on this blog so you don't have to have a google account to leave comments.

oops

Somehow I posted that last one before I was done. The crabby pic was during his first bath at home, the other one was right after the bath when his mother picked him up to comfort him. Things have been going pretty well, he has gotten the hang of nursing, and is hungry all of the time. We took him in for a one week check-up this morning, he is back up to his birth wieght of 6lb 12oz. The dog has taken an interest in the new addition. He has been ok, but if Dylan is low to the ground he does a little excessive sniffing and tries to sneek in some kisses.

I could go on and on about the education Chrissy and I are getting, but I am already tired of typing.

During Bath

After Bath

As you can imagine, things have definitely changed at our house. We have been trying to get into some type of groove, but after a week, it has finally hit me- life as I had known it no longer exists. No longer can we work on our own schedules, it's all about the little guy. The funny thing is you know it is going to happen for 9 months, try to mentally prepare yourself, but once the little poop maker comes along it is a shock to your way of life.

Go Hawks

Here he is, Dylan Michael Overmohle! We checked into the hospital at 11AM thurs., and at he checked into the world at 7:32 Fri. morning. All is well so far, with the exception of nursing. He hasn't shown any interest at all, but around 6 tonight he spit up a fair amount of amniotic fluid, so we assume he just needs to get rid of all of that before he can get hungry enough to figure out the program.
I say we should have spelled the name Dillon, after Matt Dillon, (James Arness- Gunsmoke).
She says I am an idiot. I guess Dylan is better that Festus.
Chrissy is doing very well. She has the expected pain from delivery, but overall is doing a lot better than I expected. I hope she takes full advantage of all of the help she gets from the nurses, and gets enough rest in the next few days. Both of us are running on very little sleep, I have a feeling we are just going to crash anytime now. It's just hard to fall asleep now, the excitement hasn't worn off yet.
That's it for now, I sent an email with a few more pics, but I think I may have screwed it up. I'll figure it out sometime. Sorry if I lost some of you in the whole gunsmoke section, I'm tired.

WHATS THIS?

I hopped into my wifes car tonight to put it in the garage and found this on the floor! Sure looks like a candy wrapper- that's right- straight out of the halloween bowl! Unbelievable!

When is Halloween?

Every year my lovely wife buys Halloween candy, like most people do. She even gets it weeks ahead of time- nothing wrong with being prepared and ahead of the game. The problem is she puts it in a nice big bowl and sets it right on the kitchen counter, and then proceeds to yell at me every time I eat it! I'm completely confused by this. I am only human. What amI supposed to do, just look at it. I could see her point if she hid the candy on the top shelf of the cupboard, but its right there, out of the package, in the bowl. This practice has been going on for at least the last three years. Am I wrong?

Things have been very busy. Fire prevention week was a coulpe weeks ago, we had our annual firemans fundraiser, and I went to the 2 elementary schools in town to do fire prevention stuff- you know stop, drop, and roll. Six year olds like to talk a lot. We also did some live interior fire training yesterday. we just added five new members to the fire dept. so this was very valuable, but takes time and energy. Other than that it has been meetings, meetings, meetings, and trying to get stuff done around the house. I don't think I have played golf for 3 weeks, sad.

Chrissy has been doing very well. She has had the usual aches and pains, but overall is handling pregnancy better than I expected. It sounds like they want to induce her as soon as the baby drops, she has an appointment mon. morning, so it could be as early as tomorrow! I'm not counting on it, but it sounds like it will be sometime this week. She had a baby shower today in Meriden, and it sounds like we got a lot of things we need, although I'm sure there will be some things I will be scrambling to get.

Just Hangin Around

A few weeks ago Hospers Fire Dept. was called to assist with a structure fire in the town of Grainville, 8 miles south of Hospers. As I pulled out onto the highway with #1 pumper, there was already a column of black smoke visible. When we arrived on scene, there was a large 3 stall garage fully ingulfed, just starting to involve the attached house. I scrambled to get my SCBA (air pack) on as Grainville firemen were cutting vent holes in the roof. Ready for attack, I found incident command to find out what they wanted. They had been spraying water across the attic of the house through a vent hole, and decided to try and make an interior attack through the attic. This is when my ears purk up. Taking another guy from Hospers with me, up the ladder we went. I peeked through the hole, the fire was going pretty well, but the roof had been ventilated properly, so visibility was good and the flames were not advancing very quickly. This hole in the side of the hose was not cut to be an entry point, so trying to get through it with all of my gear on was not easy by any means. I started to wonder why this was the best option. Once through the wall my mask instantly fogged over from the temperature difference, trying to keep it clear was a major pain in the butt. I walked ahead 3 rafters to make room for the next guy. At this point I thought it best to get down on my hands and knees so I would be more spread out. As I started to crouch down, a poorly timed push of the hose line from outside sent me in the wrong direction- down. I don't remeber losing my balance, but there I was, hanging by my armpits. I was held up by the charged hoseline on one side and a group of wires on the other side. My very first thought was "How do I get out of this without anyone knowing what happend?" I soon realized that I could not pull myself up out of that position, so my thoughts quickly turned to just dropping to the floor. It couldn't be more than 3 or 4 feet, could it? What are the chances of a stairwell being directly below me? After hanging there for what seemed like 10 mins. (prob only 15 sec) I decided I should just call for help. Turns out the second guy in wasn't quite in yet. Once he finally did snake in the small hole he encountered the same fogging mask problem. I was just hoping he wouldn't step on my head. By this time I have to say that I was getting pretty tired, and then I heard it over my radio- "MAN DOWN, MAN DOWN" As I started to hear all of the commotion that goes along with as statement like this, I just started yelling "west side, main floor" simple and to the point. A short time later I was grabbed and let down to the main floor by a guy that I definetly need to buy a drink or two for. While taking my manditory walk to the ambulance, I felt the need to throw any piece of gear that I could get off of me and say things that would make a childs ears explode. I quickly realized while sitting in the rig and being bombarded with questions that things could have been a lot worse. Most of the guys know what it is like to be in bad situations, and things rarely ever go as planned. It didn't take long for me to start cracking jokes and BSing with the guys. Ten minutes later I was back up on the roof picking apart the burnt spots.
After all was said and done, the guys garage was a complete loss- including a '68 Corvette, a Harley, a lot of tools (he was a contractor), and the 800-900 rounds of ammo that was going off the majority of the time. He is currently repairing the house.
All is well with me, I had a very soar back and shoulders for 3-4 days, and a little bit of hurt pride.

Damn Hawkeyes

I'm not even going to start on the game, it would take hours. Even though the Hawks played like absolute crap, I still had a good time. We left Friday morning and stopped at a golf course right along hwy 20 in a small town called Dike. Every trip we always talk about stopping and playing a round, I'm glad we finally got that done. It turns out that it is a very nice 18 hole course, with many sand traps that are like ball magnets. Friday night I met some friends that go to UNI downtown IC. Every year it gets harder for me to keep up, I hate to say it, but I think I'm getting old. Saturday morning the grill was fired up and the tailgating was on. We cruised to a few different spots to hang out with different friends, and made the standard stroll down melrose. After the sad excuse for a football game was over I bought a couple things for the baby, we went out to eat, and pretty much just decided to lay low and watch the night games at the motel. Not much excitement- until around midnight when I heard some commotion outside and something about 911. I went outside and asked the guy what was going on he said "There was an attack, some guy is laying over there." I went over there to find a big guy on the ground swinging his arms around and a lady trying to hold him down. I asked her what happend and told her I am an EMT. She said "Oh good, he has a pulse, I checked!" I found this very comical. After telling her to just get away from him before she got hurt, I just did a basic assesment and waited for the ambulance to get there. Sad to say, but that was probably more exciting than the game.
We made it back it time today to watch Tampa kick Carolina's butt, so the weekend wasn't a complete loss.

Gettin' Started

I've been thinking about starting a blog for a while, so I thought I should just go for it. Things have been very busy this summer. I have been working way too much, golfing as much as possible, and trying to keep track with friends I don't get to see very often anymore. Of course my wife will tell you that I have been having way too much fun, and making a little more than the most out of my last summer without child. I have managed to get the baby's room done, well, kind of done anyway.


That's all I'm going to give you for now. I'm headed down to Iowa City bright and early fri. morning for the Hawkeye homecoming game. Yes, I plan on having a very good time- this will be the only hawks game I will make it to this fall. But I do have an interesting blog, that I can hopefully get out soon, titled "As I was hanging there, all I could think was how the hell did I get myself into this"


Stay tuned