Shoulda done this years ago…

Last week, after the 60 degree-to-20 degree-in-a-day temperature snap, I went out to TSC and bought a woodstove. It was something that I had been meaning to do since I bought the house, and Marie and I had talked about it a couple months ago, but hadn’t had the time to actually go and get it. After getting the stove itself, I had to make a few return trips to TSC and Lowe’s (and Kristin and Rod’s to get the crimper from Dad) to assemble the components needed to put it all together. We got home from Saginaw last night at about 11:00, and with crimper in hand, went to work on the stovepipe. Actually, I went to work on the stovepipe, Marie went out in the 10 degree night (plus wind) to scrounge up kindling and dry firewood.

Both of us being successful in our endeavors, I lit the fire, sat back, and hoped for the best. That is, I hoped that there was nothing in the chimney that would cause the smoke to fail to vent properly, that there were no holes in the chimney that would cause the heat to vent to the attic, that the unit was assembled properly so that it wouldn’t spew smoke into the house, etc. etc. Primarily I was just concerned that I might catch the house on fire. Fortunately, I’m still blogging from the relative comfort of my kitchen this morning, and the rest of the house is as intact as it was before engaging the woodstove.

Anyhow, I figured that the stove would put out enough minimal heat that it would supplement the primary heat of the boiler and allow the heat production in the house to exceed the heat loss from the house… an issue which has caused considerable consternation on previous days and nights that drop below 20 degrees. Well, I was not just a little correct in my expectations. With the fire going at a decent clip inside the stove, that sucker was absolutely cranking out the heat! Actually, it was so hot that we stayed up until about 2:30am just babysitting it to make sure that it stayed under control.

I can almost feel the slight reduction in the hemorrage of cash to DTE for the winter gas bills. Stickin it to The Man. Yeah.

Wind and fire

In the past week, we’ve had fire calls nearly every day and night.
The first one (after the Halloween barn fire) was six acres of very dense woods, involving four departments as well as the DNR Wildland Fire Coordinator. A small area of this fire rekindled the next morning, so the same folks were out there again.
The second (or third, I suppose) was a mutual aid to Milan, who also had four departments on the scene of a one hundred acre field and forest fire. This one rekindled twice over the last couple days, each time involving nearly a full one hundred acres.
Two days ago, a campfire ignited a 25′x250′ storage garage from about 200 yards away. The garage then ignited the adjacent field. I was in Ann Arbor when the call went out, and by the time I got back down to the station, there were three other departments already on the scene, and Van Buren Township’s Engine was pulling into our station to cover any incoming calls. Since there were no trucks left at the station, I stayed with the Van Buren guys as a navigator, and we took a call for a tree on wires across a road. It ended up being phone and tv wiress, so we cut the tree down and the homeowner grabbed a tractor and helped us tow it out of the road. With the garage fire out, our trucks came back to the station, and about two hours later, we finished cleaning and reloading all the hoses, nozzles, foam, tools, turnout gear, etc. About an hour later (and after two sips of a beer) we were called back for a rekindle on the garage. Not being in Ann Arbor this time, I made the first truck and ended up climbing into the rafters and making the attic (the part that was still intact) look like a bubble bath. That took care the remaining hotspots.
And last night, we were called to an out-of-control brush fire. When we pulled up, we could see an area in the woods about 100′x50′ that was on fire with flames about 3 feet tall. We were about to pull the brush truck off the drive into the woods when the homeowner came running up screaming expletives, telling us to get off his land, and refusing to put the fire out. As we were discussing with the captain as to our course of action, the homeowner ran off and returned with a front-end loader which he used to charge at the trucks as if he were planning to push them out of his driveway. So… we backed up to the road and sat there until WCSD showed up. Four deputies later, and the gentleman was politely helping us carry around our hose and pointing out were there remaining hot spots, and apologizing for taking us away from our dinners. It seem the threat of arrest really brings out the calmer side of the bipolars.
So, done with that, Marie and I went to dinner at Chili’s, came back to the house, and I crashed hard for ten consecutive hours. [Yawn].

Jeff Needs

I saw this on Ken’s blog. Googling “Jeff needs” (quotes included) generates a “to-do” list of sorts.

Jeff Needs ROCKY. (Err…)
Jeff needs to communicate to his team Ed’s concerns.
– Jeff also needs to clarify with Ed if Ed is taking the project over from him.
– Jeff needs to explain to Ed that given the situation more time will be wasted filling out timesheets every 15 minutes than work done.
– (Apparently, Ed is the source of my problems… and angst. Putz.)
Jeff needs to seek approval of NSC. (I need to be validated.)
Jeff needs to organise appearing high up on the search results. (Sigh. It’s all just a popularity contest.)
Jeff needs to go! (Hey! What did I do to you!?)
JEFF NEEDS TO COME BACK TO RAW AND BRING MATT WITH HIM. (I knew I should never have left the professional wrestling circuit.)
Jeff needs to explore his plans, always open to the option of changing the plan if this does not work out as he hopes. (Adapt and overcome!)
Jeff needs all of his money working for him if he wants to retire at age 57. (Might have to make that 59.)
Jeff needs your help to bring the right priorities to Capitol Hill.
Jeff needs to come back. has any1 seen him on spike tv lately?
Jeff needs to speak with his hands free and needs a wireless lavaliere microphone. (What’s a lavaliere?)
Jeff needs a jump-start. (Or just a push?)
Jeff needs to not give into the tendency to overwork his mechanics. (I overwork them, they overwork my checkbook. It all works out.)
Jeff needs to have a medical procedure done in the very-near future due to problems (strangulated hernia) related to a gastric bypass he had done two years ago. (Erm. Bet you wondered how I keep my great figure.)
Jeff needs assistance as his appellate counsel begins his last round of appeals.
Jeff needs to find out what the word “hiatus” means and realize that he’s not on one. (No kidding.)
Jeff Needs A Change.
Jeff needs a climbing saddle, ropes, chains, and a 200-ton crane (Sweet!)
Jeff needs to come back. when he and matt were together they were unstopable. (The Dynamic Duo)
Jeff needs somehow to get the executable to users and have them run it. (Virus in email, email to user, user opens in Outlook Express. It’s a beautiful symbiosis.)
(And the last one… ’cause I’m bored now.)
Jeff needs to tighten up his posts and do more editing. But Hey — It is his blog. …

Ring of Fire

Halloween night turned out to be a fire department all-nighter. At about 5:30pm that evening, just ten seconds after Marie let me know that dinner was just about ready, tones went off for a brush fire. The scenario I pictured: someone drove by on the road, saw a Halloween bonfire, called it in as a field fire on their cell phone, and continued down the road. I figured I’d be back in twenty minutes. Four hours later, I finally clomped back into the house and sat down to my re-warmed dinner. It turns out that we had about two acres of total wooded area on fire with a rapidly expanding ring of flame that was moving quickly through dry leaves and pine needles covering the ground. These are the good fires – relatively easy and fun to put out, no real damage done… the kind that make you feel good about the fire department, as we kept it from going deep into the woods or to any surrounding structures.

At 2:40am that night we were toned out for a barn fire. When Jeff, Scott, and I rolled up in the engine, the whole thing was already engulfed and the roof was already starting to fall in. We hit it right away with the roof deluge gun (which took 40 seconds to empty the 500 gallon tank on the engine), which knocked down the fire considerably and removed any danger of it spreading, but everything inside was already a total loss, including the four Tennessee Walker horses owned by the family. It was six hours later when we finally rolled up the last hose after having to pull down all the steel siding and drag the pieces of roof off the stacks of hay and straw inside. These are the fires that make you feel useless as a fire department. For all that works, we might as well have just sat there and watched it burn to the ground.

As a finishing touch to the evening, just as I backed the engine into the station (we were the first ones to the fire and the last ones to leave), tones went off again for a car accident. One car rear-ended another at about 45-50mph, going completely under the front one so that its rear wheel were sitting at the top of the windshield of the rear one. No major injuries, but it did take a while to get the cars stabilized to get the one patient out. The weird configuration of the two vehicles is probably exactly what kept any of the occupants from being seriously injured.