Tonight I was sitting in my office and remembered I needed to hang up my fire certificates that have been sititng in my desk drawer for a month or two. I excitedly ran to the tool box to find a hammer and nails. Of course I missed the stud in the wall the first 2 shots but who cares that will be under the frame when I am finished and 3rd time was my luck .. bamm the 2 nails were in time to HANG!! However quickly I realized that I had a problem.... you see I had two certificates one for Firefighter I and one for the dreaded Haz Mat Ops. I sit here thinking which one goes up on top of other on wall. I mean haz mat ops that is 32 hrs of memorizing colored placards and numbers and colors even though the freaking name of the hazard 9 out of 10 times is on the freaking sign but dont get me going. Then lets not forget the wonderful experience of similating a decontamination zone. Nothing better than a bunch of firefighter guys scrubbing you down with a waterhose and a scrub brush made for rust and mud from metal. And you know every guy always scrubs your boobs first. Life is fair though I made sure to ACCIDENTALLY swing the brush up a little too quick between the legs so all is fair. THen after your fire gear is nice and soaked, you just love that the fire pager goes off. Getting out of a wet paif of bunker pants is awesome getting in a pair not so AWESOME. My gear was so wet that i could have wrung them out to put out the car fire. But I could go on about hazmat ops forever.... what about Firefighter I ... i mean the memories. Figuring out the best way to sleep so that you didnt drool on your papers or get that nice line across your forehead when you sleep on the edge of the book. Then the rest of class everyone asks ya what the hell is on your forehead. I had to explain it is the line of shame for those of us that think 8 am is WAY TOO EARLY FOR FIRE CLASS!! Don't get me wrong the reward of last day finally getting to play in the burn house AWESOME... but sitting in class 8 hours a day having a teacher tell you to be quiet and give you little 15 minute breaks every hour and teaching you things like how to tie knots, pick up things correctly, and the dangers of forest fires... well it reminded me of kindergarten way TOO much. So you people feel my delima..... what to do what to do. So I went ahead and hung them up..... sorry firefighter I got top billing due to the fact it was triple the hours of my life. But now as I sit here staring at the certificates I say wow that is all we get for going through all that hell... what a crock!!!