End of an era

And the beginning of a new.
The Lair is being relocated.
Had the opportunity and pleasure to get together one more time for the immediate foreseeable future last night with a few folks for a send off get-together with Murphy's Law.  Bbq and good beer were enjoyed as the typical war stories were embellished told.
I'm going to miss the regular interactions and torturing with my bad humor.  It won't be the same through email, phone calls and blogging.  At least I can take solace in knowing that with Aaron making the trip with him, there will be plenty of pun-ishment doled out.  That is, if the dogs don't end up sitting up front and Aaron is in the back behind the fence.

Safe travels, my friends.  Best wishes on the new endeavors.

Friday funny

A wife, being the romantic sort, sent her husband a text:

                                         If you are sleeping, send me your dreams.

                                         If you are laughing, send me your smile.

                                         If you are eating, send me a bite.

                                         If you are drinking, send me a sip.

                                         If you are crying, send me your tears.

                                                         I love you!"

                                         The husband, replied,

                                         Am on toilet.. Please advise

Dr. Drobkin was a world-famous cardiologist who earned his undergraduate, graduate, and medical degrees in his hometown and then left for Manhattan where he quickly rose to the top of his field.

 

Soon he was invited to deliver a significant paper, at a conference held in his hometown. He walked on stage, placed his papers on the lectern, but they slid off onto the floor.

 

As he bent over to retrieve them, at precisely the wrong instant, he inadvertently farted. The microphone amplified his mistake resoundingly through the lecture room and reverberated it down the hall! He was quite embarrassed but somehow regained his composure just enough to deliver his paper. He ignored the resounding applause and raced out the stage door, never to be seen in his hometown again.

 

Decades later, when his elderly mother was ill, he returned to visit her. He reserved a hotel room under the name of Cohen and arrived under cover of darkness.

 

The desk clerk asked him, "Is this your first visit to our city, Mr. Cohen?"

 

Dr. Drobkin replied, "Well, young man, no, it isn't. I grew up here, received my education here, but then moved away."

 

"Why haven't you visited?" asked the desk clerk.

 

"Actually, I did visit once, many years ago, but an embarrassing thing happened and since then I've been too ashamed to return."

 

The clerk consoled him, "Sir, while I don't have your life experience, one thing I have learned is that often what seems embarrassing to me isn't even remembered by others. I bet that's true of your incident too."

 

Dr. Drobkin replied, "Son, I doubt that's the case with my embarrassment."

 

"Was it a long time ago?"

 

"Yes, many years."

 

The clerk asked, "Was it before or after the Drobkin Fart?"

That didn't go as planned

Yesterday I took off work two hrs early.  I needed to get home in time to take my fire department's boat to the shop for some routine maintenance.
Shortly before I was going to leave work, the alerts went off for a structure fire.  As I understand it, the call first came in as a smoke investigation.  The first on scene reported a house fully involved.  Being the middle of the day, the units that did get out were largely understaffed, as were units from surrounding jurisdictions that were called.
As I'm driving home, I'm listening to the radio traffic via a scanner app.  A brush fire was reported in another part of the county, stretching even thinner the thin resources.  Fortunately that sounded like a pretty small situation and was brought under control quickly.
I got home minutes before my station (we already had an engine on the structure fire) was alerted for mutual aid for another brush fire.  A farmer's brush pile fire had gotten away from him.  Ultimately it burned about 10-15 acres of field and woods.  The farmer also lost about a dozen of the big hay bale rolls.  Those are a pain when the fire gets in those.
I was on scene for only a few hours, but it was long enough that my opportunity to take the boat to the shop had passed.
Maybe I can try again today.....

Friday funny

Haven't done one of these in a while.
Sorry about the jpeg merging onto the sidebar, but it was too small to read at original downloaded size.

Happy Monday on Tues.

The weather system that is passing through made for an interesting commute this morning.  If I didn't have so much work that  needed to be done by Friday, I would have stayed home today.  I haven't seen roads this slick in quite some time.  I hate freezing rain.  The areas where the roads had not been plowed were navigable, as the frozen crust gave some traction.  Where the roads had been plowed, all bets were off, because then the surface was simply wet ice.
My typical route out to the main roads has a steep hill with a stop sign and sharp right turn thru a one lane underpass at the bottom.  Of course, this being a "primary secondary" road, it had been plowed.   I decided near the top not to chance it and to turn around and go a different route.  As soon as my forward movement stopped, sideways movement began as I slid to the side of the road.  I managed to get turned around, thankful for 4 wheel drive and good tires.  Didn't have any issues after that, but caution was still needed.
As I got closer to work and traffic volume started to increase, I had a few moments of second guessing my decision to go to work.  The dichotomy of cautions/ fearful drivers and the aggressive, not-aware-of-anything-more-than-20'-in-front-of-them drivers don't mix well.  I'll take an empty, ice slicked road any day over that.  Regardless, made it to work successfully, albeit with an extra 45 minute drive time.  Glad I won't be out there later when the volume really picks up.  One of the main reasons I go to work at zero-dark-thirty.
We'll get to see what kind of flooding there will be this afternoon with mid 40's temps, predicted heavy rain and melting snow.

Getting old sucks.  I've been noticing the last year or so that I don't recover from a disrupted sleep schedule like I used to.
My wife and I went to a Christian concert Sunday evening with a bunch of friends.  It's called "Winterjam" and features 10 different bands.  It was enjoyable and they had just about every genre of music; rap, pop, bluegrass, headbanger/thrasher and rock.  Walking out of the arena, we were greeted with about 2 inches of snow and coming down heavy, so the trip home was a bit slow.  We got home around 2 a.m.  On a typical work day, I get up at 3:15.  I was pretty much wiped out most of the day Monday.  I'm thankful it was a holiday.
I've notice the same effect responding on fire dept. calls.  If I'm out a good portion of the night on a call, I'm toast most of the next day.  I used to be able to spend the night at the station, responding to calls throughout the night, get up and go to work and never have a problem.  Like I said, sucks getting old.