Corridor 9

I found out some new information today regarding my retirement and social security benefits. I’ll have to check into this on my own, but I believe the information to be pretty correct. Because of the job I have, I am not required to pay into social security. I’m not sure if this is because of my hazardous-duty pay or if it is because the city pays into a separate retirement plan or what. Either way, I am not currently paying into social security. However, before this job I payed into social security for 10+ years. Now it is my understanding that because I don’t pay into social security now, the government is going to take 66% of what I should receive when I do retire. Talk about getting screwed.

In other news, its been raining real hard here today. So far we’ve received over 2 inches of rain with some sections of road being more than a foot under water. This is all well and good until we have to work a car wreck in a pond. Add in the lightning and electrical potential and we’ve just stepped up the severity of the incident exponentially. Lets just hope we don’t have to go out today.

Last but not least, I finally received my 40 hour HAZMAT Technician certification in the mail today. I’ve been waiting since May for it. Now that its here I’m one step closer to earning my degree. I’m going to look for a FF I & FF II skills test here in the next few months. I’d rather not wait till next year, but they are hard to come by during the fall due to the numbers of fire schools going on at the same time. Soon enough though.