Well it has been a here and there and everywhere kind of month

Well in the last month I have been a lot of places. First I have worked a fairly decent amount, traveled (with my wonderful girlfriend) and moved into a new place. So lets’ get to it, work has been really active lately. There are currently 3 newer people than me and 2 of them are on my shift (Hooray I am no longer the rookie) with the most recent coming in 2 days ago on the 15th of Feb. Although I have corresponded with him, Leo, I do not know him more than a cursory chatting at shift change. The former rookie, Joe, was only a rookie for two weeks of which one was when I was on vacation. The third new guy, who would actually be the first new guy after me, is Dave. He is pretty cool and I am currently his roommate, more on that later. Lately I have been working my tail off at work. It has decided to rain here, the rainy season ended with January, and in such has been causing fire alarms at all times of the day and night. I am also in the process of working on my driving certifications. This is a lengthy process since each certificate is 40-80 hours of classroom plus practical training plus driving. Then I have to test, both written and practical’s all before I am able to drive the vehicles. Although it does not seem like that much considering the responsibility associated with it, it is to me since I have been driving and pumping for the last 5 years of my fire career and because I didn’t want to pay the State of Massachusetts $50ish to get my national certification instead of my state certificate of completion I have to sit thru the whole class instead of just the reduced version for the already certified person. Oh well at least I have stuff to keep me busy.

So like I said once Joe got here I went on vacation with Natasha. We ended up traveling around the southern part of Spain, Portugal (mostly roads to Lisbon and back) as well as Madrid. Natasha arrived on the last day of Jan 2011 and was here for 11ish days. It was really nice to see her since we haven’t seen each other since Halloween 2010. She is now residing in the wonderful Commonwealth of Massachusetts and has stated publically that the East Coast is better than the West Coast, and you know me I am not arguing with a that logic. So once Natasha got here we visited Seville for one day and then traveled by car to Ronda; an afternoon, Malaga; night and morning, Marbella; morning, Estapona; night and morning, Gibraltar (as in the British Overseas Territory not a Country and the location of the video at the bottom of this blog); night and morning, Tariffa; morning, Cadiz; afternoon, and then finally back to Utrera for a much needed break in driving (for me at least). We then met up with Dave and burned up to Portugal; specifically Lisboa (a.k.a. Lisbon for the people not in the know). While in Lisboa we also met Ryan Walsh and some of his friends and went on a trolley tour around the city. Then, taking the scenic route, I drove back to Seville / Utrera for a night and shopping in the morning before going to Madrid to meet up with Ryan Walsh via the train (YES no driving!). I am not going to go into detail about the trip now but I will in further blogs, which will be coming this week, which will include a few enticing pictures to “wet your palate” so to speak.

So I have moved into a new place. It is really nice. It is a 4 bedroom 2.5 bath with a full kitchen, dining room and living room with a patio and a front porch area. Currently it is only Dave and myself with the anticipation of another firefighter coming in as a third roommate but the aforementioned firefighter screwed up and got another place the day after he was supposed to come see our place. Pfft! He wasn’t good enough for us anyways. It is nice since Dave and I have the biggest rooms. Well I have the largest and Dave has the second but he has a walk out patio but I have a view of the water fountain and during the summer my room is the coolest and also has the most windows. But as like every other time when moving into a new place there are some things that just are not included so we have been scavenging the bargain bins and Ikea for the required items to make our house a home.

Well that is enough for now. The video below is from Gibraltar of the Barbary Apes. Natasha took a video of two of the apes cleaning themselves and since she didn’t post it I am going to. Oh and it is sideways so prepare to turn your head to your left for 9 seconds. Hopefully youtube.com is kind enough to me as to keep it up for a while.



Stay Frosty
-C