Top Hose Tourney

Yesterday our Fire Department sponsored Firefighter Games as part of a fundraiser and 9/11 commemoration.

An obstacle course race to Save the Citizen.

And a Shootout.

That's Dearest in the white helmet. He and his partner won the Shootout, retiring undefeated.

And then there was this.

Old School

Speaking of old fashioned, and we were, I recently discovered the pleasure of bottled ink.

I've always had fountain pens, but I used cartridges. Unrestrained ink seemed like a mess waiting to happen.

Got a bottle to try out in a drawing pen and discovered, it wasn't that much of a mess. I followed a link to Noodlers Bottled Ink, color Antietam. I bought one and filled my editing pen. This ink looks like dried blood. While that may be an acquired taste, I think it's swell. A metaphor, don't you know.

Of course, one thing led to another.

Voila! I don't have enough fountain pens for all the lovely inks.

Not much of a mess means I haven't spilled a bottle refilling a pen, but I do usually end up looking like this.

Fortunately, fountain pen ink isn't permanent.

Most of it, anyway.

Besides, no matter how old one is, fountain pens have a style, gel pens can't provide.

En Français -- Week 2

Second week of Elementary French -- after Week One went so well -- this morning, Madame labeled us "elderly" because we knew what a fountain pen was. (le stylo)

Pardon?

This is beginning to get on my nerves.

I'm not quite ready for the rocking chair yet.

I passed the advanced EMS class with a bunch of firemen who, though they may not have cursed in front of me, still wanted to be my partner.

The day the Brown's Gulch fire started, our department had three calls starting with a car wreck at 4 AM. By the time we were released from the fire, some of the team had been up for 24 hours, including me.

Last weekend, I extricated an injured bicyclist off a mountain by myself.

Now, I know this is not my problem, it's hers. Perception, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, but the problem with labels is they tend to limit expectations and possibilities.

You can't control how you're perceived,
only how you're presented.

Tim Gunn

Yeah, well, I believe you, Tim, but I still feel like crap after class.

Company 4 Breakfast