So much to say, not enough time...

The June 14th post is in the works. The lovely and talented curtana gave me a huge topic to discuss, and I quite simply don't have enough time to finish writing it before I leave for work tonight. If all goes well, I will have it finished by tomorrow.

Work has become busier now that it's the weekend. It's not really surprising, because the weekend is prime 911 time. People go out and drink, they drive late at night, they let their hair down and make very poor life choices and then need someone to come fix said poor life choices. ;)

My favourite call from last night was this one.

Me: "Nine-one-one, neuf-un-un, what is your emergency, quelle est votre urgence?"

Female caller: "Um, yeah, we kind of need... DNR, I guess? There's a bear on my deck!" (DNR are the local animal/wildlife wranglers)

Me: O_O "Okay, let me take down your information and we'll get someone there as soon as possible. Is everyone safe inside? No one outside with the bear?"

Caller: "My son was outside, but I got him in. The bear's off the deck, but he's still poking around in the yard. Oh, no, here he comes again!"

So, yeah. Bears.

We also had innumerable drunk people passed out in the street, being nuisances in bars, yelling and banging on the wrong doors, harassing other people, etc. One guy called around 4:00 three sheets to the wind, said he was lost and asked the police to give him a ride home. Protip: the police are actually out there dealing with emergencies. Take a cab.

There were four fires of varying sizes, three falls from balconies, two headers down the stairs, two possible b&e's, one missing kid, one child who fell off a high ledge, five elderly people with varying levels of medical distress, about seven serious motor vehicle collisions and twice as many minor ones, five domestic disturbances, three times that many neighbour disputes, and five reports of "gunshots." The list goes on.

At the end of the night two of the operators who are a bit more accustomed to 911 turned to each other, grinned, and said: "Hey, that wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be!"

*falls over and dies*

Tonight isn't a full moon, but it's Saturday, so I expect it will still be pretty busy. At least by my standards. I've been working the 911 lines all week, but tonight they're going to train me on dispatch, because the two operators who've been dispatching the whole time will be leaving Monday, which will leave me with a group of newbies, basically. So I'll have to step up and do dispatch, which is the more complex of the tasks. I confess I'm still worried about doing fire dispatch, even though I know intellectually that it's not much different from police dispatch. I guess it's because I've done police dispatch before, and I know the guys, whereas I'm nervous about actually having to set off the giant alarm in the various fire stations (no, really, that's exactly what happens: a giant siren goes off to alert them there's a fire/first responder situation).

So that's the news for tonight. More tomorrow, most likely. See you later, LJ!