SRT

Despite ex drama, I've actually gotten some decent sleep lately. Today I slept through a fire alarm in my building. That's pretty hard to do, but it goes to show how well I've soundproofed my room. I have a fan going and sleep with earplugs. And the alarm is out in the hallway on the second floor so the sound had to travel to my floor and through my guestroom. Thankfully, the building wasn't on fire. Bill did think of me (what a nice man) and he was going to knock on my door when the alarm stopped.

The reason I was sleeping so hard was because I'd worked a double, from 10pm Tuesday night to Wednesday afternoon. Our Special Agent (SA) here at the park (you could call him our Investigator or Detective) is in charge of the Special Response team. He started it up in January after I'd left for FLETC so we can start serving our own warrants. The US Marshall's are a little busy for our stuff, I guess.

I applied for the team while I was gone, but of course, they didn't want me when I wasn't around. When I came back in September they had an opening on the team and I thought I'd get on, no problem. My boss thought so and he's on the team. I talked with the SA in October and it sounded like he didn't want me on the team after all. He said he was going to have to open it up for everyone to apply and if anyone with more seniority than I wanted to get on, I'd be out of luck. I figured he was just looking for an excuse to not put me on the team since if anyone else were interested they'd have applied back in January like I did.

I was a little ticked, which was why I started looking around at other jobs. Whiskeytown NRA has a subject to furlough job and I just got my application to Padre Island all ready.

Then the SRT team had a day of training at the range and the SA invited me, even though I'm not on the team. I figured he wanted to see if I could shoot and I better do a good job if I wanted on. Saturday I dragged myself out of bed and went to the range to practice my 25 yard and support hand pistol shooting.

The practice paid off (I had some sweet center mass shots at 25 yards!). We shot the 60 round FLETC course of fire (instead of the much easier 30 round course for qualification). There are 300 points possible. My best score ever was a 298 while I was at FLETC shooting everyday. Since we don't normally shoot this course, we somehow managed to shoot to many rounds (67 instead of 60). So the scores were kind of messed up, but I had the second highest score of the group. Only the SA shot better. He's thinking of using the FLETC course to qualify the SRT team members, since it's a better course of fire.

Afterwards we qualified with the regular course and then played with our rifles. I got my laser sight dialed in (which is really cool. Much quicker target acquisition).

At the end of the day the SA made the announcement that I'm the newest member of the team! And he said, "You should all be scared, she's a really good shot."

I'm pretty excited. I'll be going to SWAT school!!! A week of training in New Jersey. I'll probably be the only woman there, but the SA says I can hold my own.

If I end up going to SWAT school in the spring, I'll stay here for another year. That's the deal. They buy my gear, send me to training, and ask that I give them a year. Then I'm free to move on. So I'm not going to apply to those other parks. Instead, I'll make the best of staying here. I'll get another year of bagpipe lessons and maybe join the band if I put in more time practicing. And staying here is good for my vacations. I was worried that if I got a job elsewhere it would screw up my trip to Nepal, the two weeks in Switzerland in August, and Laura's visit in April.

They do treat me pretty well here. I get all the vacation I want with minimal hassle, they gave me weekends off, and I'm on the team!!! There will be other cool jobs I can apply for in a year.