Good afternoon. We are now on day 8. Today in order to write my blog entry, I decided I would go outside on our front porch and sit on the rocking chair. One thing I thought about last night while I was at work was that when I'm away from home it feels so much easier to get into the writing groove. It's weird. I can't explain as to why I have such a hard time at home. Maybe its because I feel like my mind is going a million different directions when we are all at home. I'm thinking "Zoe don't do that!" or "Ally get your homework done please!" Or "I wonder what we are going to do for dinner."
Sometimes in order to focus, you need to retire to a place where there are less distractions. So, I am going to briefly attempt to write for you detailing the environment it is for me out here. On the rocking chair, I sit at a slight angle, facing towards the right. In my direct site just to both sides of my vision are two of the big bushes we have out front. There is a third bush but it is further off to the side, not as much in my direct line of site. As I look down at my screen, I can still see the cement stairs leading down to the main level of the yard. That is still not as far down as it goes. If you walk down these steps right in front of me, and then go about ten feet, there are three more cement steps that lead down to the main sidewalk that goes in front of our house.
Through the two main bushes that are in my line of site, out past the main sidewalk I can see what looks to be a six foot area of grass. This area runs between the sidewalk and the curb, all the way down the block. Of course, I don't have site of this from where I'm looking, all I see is the part visible through the bushes. The bushes are different in height as well. The one to my left is a little bit shorter than the one on my right. Our American flag is hanging just over the bush to my right. We have a tree just off to the left of our front porch and the view I have of it from here is the large set of branches that are hanging over head where I'm at, sort of giving a canopy effect. The grass has begun to grow much faster over the last few days and this tells me that when I am off on Saturday I will be getting the lawn mower gased up and the lawn mowed. When I think about this, I do not mind because I actually enjoy mowing the grass. It is almost relaxing in a way.
So today as I sit out here on the porch, I close my eyes for a few seconds and try to think about all the things going on around me, and everything I can feel, hear, etc. The street right in front of me is 3rd st, which is a very busy road. Usually when it is busy out you are lucky if you can count to twenty before another car passes. It happens, and happens pretty often, but when it is the middle of the day not so much. Right now I have counted to ten so far and now I can hear another group of cars coming. I believe that the main reason why there are breaks at all is because a few blocks from here there are stop lights. If there were no stop lights on 3rd I'm sure the traffic would remain heavy a lot longer.
The wind is blowing softly. It feels nice and cool all around me. The funny thing is, it is not cold enough though to cool the house right now. The thermastat in the house says the temp is mid 70's right now. We have not put on our window AC just yet. I'm not sure when we will. Maybe when the temperature reaches a number that is just too damn hot. Who knows. I guess we will see. So we have the wind blowing a gentle breeze around me. Passing right in front of our house, on the street are the sounds of many cars. Each car different in its own way. Sometimes cars without mufflers or even motorcycles will pass by and rev their engine loudly right as they pass. Usually we have the front door open to let the breeze come through the house and when these loud engines drive by it is noticeable even from inside the house. Way in the background I can hear a train honking. Just a few blocks from here down near 2nd st is where the train tracks run by. They run all the way through town and head to the southern part of Clinton.
So, moving on from that, I want to talk about last night at work. After the doors were locked, and I had patroled outside, I went down to the office. Maintenance received a call and we went out to investigate. The report said someone spotted a fire on the helicopter landing pad. I told the maintenance guy that I had been outside minutes earlier and had not noticed anything. We took the maintenance truck and drove over there. Of course on the landing pad, there was nothing. I felt a sense of relief when we saw this, because it assured me that what I had seen and noticed was correct. But, we did smell a strong smell of smoke. We went just off the property around the corner and there it was. A decent size fire burning.
The area that had caught fire is used by employees and some patient family members as a smoke break area because the hospital does not allow smoking on the property. Along the curb where the fire was, there are these large wooden things. Basically they are about ten foot long per section, and cubed in a way, completely out of wood and from what I'm told, have a kind of oil inside. I don't know if the oil they were coated with is a way that they are built, but that's what they told me. Well, someone had stuck a lit cigerette down beside a crack in the wooden railroad piece, and now a fire about three foot long was going. Tom, the maintenance guy with me, thought he had an extinguisher in the truck but was mistaken. I told him to go ahead and go get one, I would try to put out the main fire. When he came back, I had been grabbing arm fulls of dirt and dumping it all over the flames. After a few minutes, when he came back the flames were now much smaller in size. He seemed surprised. He was like "Hey, you almost got it out." After a little more dirt on the fire, the active flames were gone. However, there were still pieces of wood and debri that were kindled. He sprayed it all down using the extinguisher but we could hear a crackling. Plus I felt the back of the area where the huge railroad log was and it was really hot. I asked him if we could bring some water over because we needed to soak the whole thing to make sure it would not reignight. We went and got a huge mop bucket of water and doused it. I took a large metal rod and wedged it under the log, lifting that end of it up. Tom stuck his shovel under it, clearing out the stuff that kindled. Suddenly we knew it was all put out.
By this point we had not called anyone and reported anything. I decided that I needed to call the on call supervisor with the security company and report what had happened. I filled out an incident report and asked the on call supervisor if I should still call the fire department to at least let them know what happened. My thought on it was basically a "cover my ass" type of mentality. He was like "I would recommend it mainly to cover yourself. That way the client really can't say anything because you did everything you could do." So I did. I called the fire department and let them know what happened, that Tom and I extinguished the fire, that we soaked it with water and pulled pieces out to make sure there was no chance of rekindle. I mentioned to them that if they felt it was necesary that they should come out and look for themselves. They decided to. I received a call from the switchboard saying that Engine 3 was on their way and wanted me to meet them at the site of the fire. After shaking hands, as they looked at the fire site, I told them I was previously a fire fighter in the Air Force. The guy in charge was like "Oh! Cool!" Then after looking and feeling all over the area of the fire, he turned to the driver and said "The whole area is cold to the touch. I think it is out for good." Then he turned to me and said "Good job!" He took my name for his report, and I then went down to the office and finished my report, detailing what the fire department said.
So last night I did read quiet a bit, I wrote both in the journal and a few pages of the book I'm writing. The main thing I have not done as much as I have wanted this week is getting out and doing some form of exercise. Am I over extending myself by planning for so much that I want to get done each day and through out the week? I still like to stick with my plan to write every day, and to exercise a few times a week. I feel good about the plan still, because I have written every day. When I can't do one, I try to make up by doing something else. For instance, this weekend when I didn't get out and work out, I wrote a little in my book, I read a chapter in the novel I'm reading, and I wrote in my blog. So although not quite like I had planned, at least I'm still sticking with it. I'm trying to keep active and not completely just say "forget it" to everything. I did take a picture of a piece of art but then as I started writing this blog I wished I had gone over to where the fire was and snapped a shot of that. What better way to talk about something than to show a visual.
So the last thing I am going to write about today is the picture I posted. You may or may not have the same reaction I did to it. When I looked it over, I couldn't tell what it is a picture of exactly. The artist did an amazing job with all the different layers of it that it does not come across to me as one specific image. Perhaps it is a painting of caves and stuff growing all around. That could be possible with the purple areas. I know the flash in the center doesn't make it any easier to see the image. I guess the purple could be a form of water fall, with the green being off to the side indicating growth of some kind. I do not know what else to write about it. I'm sure if I wanted to sit here for another thirty minutes I could find little things to write but I need to get ready for work.
So, in closing, it is time for the lesson of the day. The lesson I leave you all with today is to be open minded to the idea of learning. Never stop trying to learn. Some of the things you might learn and wonder "When will I ever use this?" Well, when I stopped being a fire fighter I didn't think I would be putting out a fire at a place that I work at. However, obviously I was wrong, and I was happy that I knew what I was doing. Because I had learned something valuable in the past, I used that and was able to do my job really well, which I'm hopeful the bosses will notice. By the bosses I mean the "Client", whom is the hospital I am security for. I guess we will see. So there you have it, be willing to learn new things. Through the process of learning, you better yourself, increase the value that your employer will possibly put on you, and possibly open doors of opportunity down the road. I am trying to be open minded through out this year long process and be open to anything I could learn, any changes in life that will make things better for us, etc. So that is it for today! It has been a pleasure writing for you all. I will write again for you tomorrow. See you on day 9!
Thanks for being here.
CB
