Knit & Play with Fire

Lazy Sunday Afternoon

Okay, here are some photos of how I spent a lazy Sunday afternoon yesterday. (scroll down for the real story!)

Okay, are you confused yet? No, I was not a a ball game. Although I was at the rear parking lot for the local Carolina league team. Do the bright orange cones give you any clue? Remember taking driver's ed and having to drive between the orange cones and parallel park between the cones? Okay, we were driving around the cones but I can promise you that I was not the one driving. Trust me on this one, I will never drive this thing! It is big and red and requires 2 drivers. Yesterday was quiet at the station so we went out for driver's training. One of the guys is still practicing tillering and that is him in the photos practicing in the parking lot. Next time, we go out he will be driving on the roads. Scary!!!

Oh, you wanted to see a picture of the guy who was driving? I guess I can do that. But I do need to tell him that he does look really cute when he wears his glasses. Okay, maybe I won't do that but he does look cute when he wears them.

But you don't come here just in hopes of seeing fire fighters in their gear. Some of you expect to see knitting. And look, I have knitting!!! This is sock 1 of my sock-a-pooolza socks. I frogged what I had and restarted it. It is the same pattern except that I am now doing it toe-up. I am really loving this pattern since it is real easy to memorize and it looks great top-down and toe-up. And I am almost at the point where I get to turn the heel. Yeah!!!!

International Scarf Exchange

I recently participated in the international scarf swap. And being bad, I forgot to post a picture of the scarf I received. Jena from over at Yarn Harpy knitted my scarf in reds and purples. She tried to knit me a pair of mittens but after two tries, she has decided that the mittens are cursed. But we are working on something else in exchange.

And my niece has claimed the scarf already. Who really wants to argue with a 9-year girl over something that has purple in it? Not me!!

And yes, the choclate was shared.

Books for Books Meme

Here is a meme that is actually right up my alley. Cara over at january one has tagged anyone who wants it. And since I like books....

Meme instructions: Look at the list of books below. Bold the ones you've read, italicize the ones you might read, cross out the ones you won't, underline the ones on your book shelf, and place parentheses around the ones you've never even heard of.

The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J. K. Rowling
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George Orwell
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
(The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon)
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
1984 - George Orwell
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J. K. Rowling
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
(The Secret History - Donna Tartt )
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C. S. Lewis
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
(Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell)
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Atonement - Ian McEwan
The Shadow Of The Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Dune - Frank Herbert

You want to do this? CONSIDER YOURSELF TAGGED. And yes, I love books. It can be very diffcult to pull me out of a booksotre without me purchasing at least 2 or 3 books. BTW, my current read is definitely different. It is The Colony by John Tayman about the Molokai leper colony. Between 1866 and 1969, if the government, both the Hawaiian and  the US, suspected that you might have Hansen's disease, you would be exiled to a remote peninsula on Molokai. It is definitley worth a read.

Playing Around with the Camera

After the fire Friday afternoon, I went down to the truck house to ride for he evening. And no, we didn't go anywhere while I was there. Although we did go out for dessert after dinner. But two of us were playing around with the camera and taking perspective shots and here are the results after I played around with the photo editing. And yes, the guys did end up running later that night. They ran 2 calls after 1 am.

Do You Want Fires with That?

Friday afternoon was interesting. We had already had 2 accident calls for the day but the best call was yet to come. Around 3 pm, I heard the call go out for another company at the other end of town for a mulch fire next to the building at one of the Taco Bell/KFC combos that we have around here.

Well, let's just say that what started out as a mulch fire turned into a 2 alarm fire. When the first unit arrived on scene, they found smoke showing and requested that the box be filled. The fire was put out using ladder pipes; in other words, hose lines off of the aerials were used.

My station was dispatched for the second alarm. By the time we got there, the fire was pretty much knocked. We ended up helping to boost the water pressure to another unit. And I had time to take a few pictures of one of my favorite pieces of apparatus - the truck!!! And my favorite crew was working Friday as well.

And yes, the establishment is closed and word is that they have already started demolition and the renovation process.