school. will it never end?

i just finished my first week of school.  i have only 4 classes, which is a record low for me! 
my semester goals:

• get a's in all your classes
• do p90x every day, and if you miss a day, you have to do that day and the next day, or you start over at day 1 again.
• this goal is getting revised. 
• now it is:  get through one entire week of p90stupidx
• or it maybe should be revised as:  get past day 3 of p90patooeyx
• go running at least 3 times a week
• clean your house!  (which is 98% clean right now!  only one more small corner of my living room left!)

i think 4 is enough for now.

from here, randomly

i believe this is how i will be spending my semester.

haiku of the day

maybe i should just

not act like a haiku-er

no way! they're funnnnnnyyy!!!

TFC DAY #8

i discovered a cool place.  so i made my own!  and it's really cooooool!  make your own, if you feel like it!

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of course.  i finally made some friends, and we get sent back to midland. 

of course.  back in midland i made another friend.  who is leaving the next morning. 

on my eighth long, long, very boring day, i am sick of food.  sick of eating out.  sick of all the weirdos who won't talk to anyone other than their own crew.  sick of everything.

on the plus side, booker was finally nice to me.  i almost peed my pants when he actually looked me in the face when he talked to me.  i almost passed out when he made a joke and actually smiled at me.  with his mouth.  full of chew, but still.

the quarters (gold stars) are the amazingness of this photo.  timmy practices stacking quarters on a regular basis all winter, apparantly.

the red arrows are the side note.  side note:  these disgusting things are ALL OVER the place.  i think chewing is one of the cardinal rules of fire fighting (i don't know how i got accepted) and they leave their spit bottles Every. Where.

Barf.

haiku of the day

i have to workout

but i can't get past day 3

man, it's really hard!

house cleaning adventures

aw MAN!!!  i was trying to save this for a few days from now!  but i clicked the wrong button.  now i have to come up with more ideas...

don't look at the [one] [dumb] picture.  just listen.

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i have been in the process for, oh, about 3 weeks, of cleaning my house.  the real kind of clean, where you sweep and mop and throw things away, and make all your closets look pretty.  (closet cleaning is my favorite, and i would only do that if i could get away with it).
today i am 98% finished.  i just have one more corner in my living room left.  there is a lot of recycling and whatnot over there. 

anyways.  i have found some interesting stuff.  my favorite is this quote i found on a sticky in some dark corner of my house.  i don't know if i made it up, or if i just wrote it down, but here is what it said:

i hope the next time you get a double-decker strawberry ice cream cone the ice cream part falls off the cone part and lands in australia.

the end.

it can be turned into
haiku of the day!

i hope the next time
your double-decker falls off,
lands in australia.

TFC DAY #7

another gorgeous one from the horrible tv show.  i keep being glad that i don't have a tv, and then i keep watching bad, addicting tv on the internet.  might have to get rid of internet soon...!

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i. want.  salad.  it was the only thing running through my head.  all day.

the only kind of food this stupid town has is mexican and fast food. 

i am finding how "inefficient" the forest service really is.  although, i don't know if it is actually the forest service, because it's the texas forest service...who really knows. 
the whole time we've been down in stockton, they kept our hotel rooms in midland.
and the whole time we've been down in stockton, they keep bringing in more and more crews, even though the crews that are here are only sitting around.

i went to the pool again for some more pt.  this time it included making some shot crew friends (aka being a traitor to my crew, but who cares?) and drinking beer. 
when i was leaving for the night (midnight - i figured it would be fine, since i would just be sleeping all day the next day) one of them asked if i wanted to "watch a movie".  (i'm guessing that he wanted to "watch a movie", not watch a movie, and i'm pretty sure i'm not wrong.)

me:  uh, nah, i'm not a big movie watcher.
him:  well don't you need some company?
me: no! (voice getting higher and nervouser) i don't really like company that much anyways!  i'm really more the alone, by myself, no one else type.
him:  are you sure?
me:  (higher still - didn't even know it could get that high) very sure!  extremely sure!  in fact, i'm so sure, that if i were any surer, i would....still....be....sure....?
him:  (funny look) huh.  ok.
me:  (still higher)  k bye!  night!  see you guys!  i'm leaving!

i just remembered a conversation i had with those 5 (or so) shot boys:
they were talking about the girl on their crew and how they had no respect for her because she had a "fling" with one of the other guys on their crew last season.  they kept talking about her lack of self-control and professionalism and on and on.
i asked them:  so what about the guy she had a fling with?
them:  what about him?
me:  wellllll. doesn't he lose some respect for having a fling with someone on his crew?
them:  ....blank stares....
oh, the world and their double standards (if that is the phrase i am looking for?).........

view from the ft. stockton fire shop.

isn't it fabulous how much better photos look when they have a border?

TFC DAY #6

the horrible tv show with beautiful music.  again!

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still trapped in my horrible room, of which i am scared to go in the bathroom because it might be breeding giant scary shower bugs.

Lesson #5.  ALWAYS BE FIRE READY
i also failed this one because i napped all day with my shoes off.  ok, ok, and my pants.  but i only told timmy about my shoes...

i broke down and did some pt.  by which i mean i swam around for an hour and talked on the phone for probably 45 minutes of that hour...

the days are getting longer.  and boringer.

lovely view from the lovely engine...

TFC DAY #5

i just read this and laughed so hard:

I just told Victor that I was concerned that I was having a series of possibly deadly mini-comas. Victor was all “Those are called naps.”            - courtesy of thebloggess

anyways.  i've been watching this horrible tv show, obviously targeting 13 year old girls.  my only defense is that it has a beautiful soundtrack, and that there is a lot of sign language (which i learned a bit of when i was interning at cathedral home). 
here is the gorgeousness that first caught my attention, and made me watch the entire season, i'm a little embarrassed to admit...  (i just spelled "gorgeous" as "georgious"...don't even ask)

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DAY # 5

in the morning i woke up and was really excited because i was still at the fire. 
PSYCH! you're actually stuck in your hotel room all day, is what i think they were trying to tell me.

just to change things up a bit, i went out and took a nap in the engine.  then i went inside and took a nap in my 80* air conditioning.  then i did 4 crosswords.  then i did 2 sudoku.  sudokus? 

the end.

TFC DAY #4

Lesson #4:  Texas tv channels are super weird.
i was trying to find like a music channel or something on tv, since there is nothing to do in the horrible town of midland, and i had No idea how to use the tv.  there were 6 channel 11's and they were all playing different things!

this was also our first day in the sun.  since we got there on the weekend, and then the holiday, the people at the place we were staging weren't working, so we got to park under their awnings.  but they came back, so we had to park out in the sun.  it was warm. 

when we went to lunch i was noticing the street names.  very strange, indeed:  cuthbert, midkiff, scharbauer, and my favorite, and also the main street: wadley.


we finally got called to a fire near a town called marfa.  are you serious? marfa? 

anyways.  i didn't know if we'd be back again, so i took some photos of our jail as we were leaving.

this is where we parked in the sun

from here you can see the entire jail, and how isolated we were...

we drove the billion hours to marfa and found the fire, which we helped mop up for exactly 2 hours.   no more, no less.  i saw my first hill on the drive and then i saw a few more at the fire, where i had to walk through spiky joshua trees (i'm pretty sure that's what they're called) with the hose.

some nice, very typical texas scenery

more nice texas scenery

first hill.  pretty much to scale.  that's me in my fire gear.  pretend you know what i'm talking about.

please note that the black things by my eyes are eyelashes not wrinkles.  thanks.

the pretty picture i thought was lost was found!  the evil joshua trees.

we had to drive another billion hours to a town we passed on the way to the fire to get a hotel for some odd reason.  it was midnight by the time we got there and we were supposed to be ready by 7 the next morning.  the most horrible experience of my life happened in fort stockton, the worst town in the world, by far.  but that's another story for another day. 

TFC DAY #3

in fire, in order to move up the make-more-money ladder, you have to get signed off on task books, which means you have been trained accordingly for each position, say a squad boss, for example, where you would be in charge of about 5 people on a fire. 
anyways, i opened my own texas staging task book.  i only got signed off one one thing.  "fetching the perfect bag of ice for our cooler".  i got specifically not signed off on being the backer for the engine, since every time i did it, whoever was driving ended up parked crooked.  i personally think it was because they weren't following my backing signals.

Lesson #3:  Pumps
i was already in the middle of completing a pumps class on our own district, but timmy decided to give me another class anyways, since we had nothing else to do.  then he quizzed me on how to start the pump on the engine, and all these other really random things. 

Lesson #3.5:  Rolling Hose - failed
i know how to roll hose.  i'm actually really good at it.  mine is always the straightest in a roll, or the smallest butterfly. 
rolling hose onto a reel is a Completely different animal.  i could. not. do it.  it was horrible.  every time i tried to roll it, it would end up getting jammed in and then someone with big muscles would have to pull it out and get it unstuck.

also, i was one minute late, which timmy said equaled 50 pushups.  i never did them.  hah. showed him.

TFC DAY #2

we spent the second day checking in to our "fire" in merkel (aka parking lot/prison/grounds/call them whatever you want), and driving to midland.  which is some serious driving.  also, the town names in texas are very strange.

since we were driving so much, and since i was in the back seat, i decided to just get comfy and take a nap.  timmy was like, "well i guess claire found her new room"...

when we finally made it to midland, we went straight to the parking lot and parked, and that was the start of our staging.  in 95 degree (at least!) heat.  we just laid around all day, and then after dinner we were forced to have a bean bag throwing tournament.  i got kicked off the team because i wanted to name us (preferrably the fluffy kitties, but i was willing to compromise with the fuzzy bears or something more masculine).  i almost got grounded to the truck because i said i would be their cheerleader instead.

when it got dark (we were "working" until midnight), we got out and some of us were playing frisbee.  i was just standing watching, because i can neither catch nor (notice how smart i sounded there?) throw a frisbee.  and suddenly something so giant landed on my head that i could barely hold it up.  timmy said to me "claire what's on your head?"  i started screaming and trying to get it off.  about 10 minutes later my head started getting heavy again.  i felt my forehead and the hugest bug bite i have ever felt was on my face!  i'm pretty sure it was a vampire bite.  with a hint of west nile. 

also, i'm pretty sure my eyes were sweating the entire time.  they also had these infecty looking red rings around the color parts...
after we got off "work", we went to our hotel where i had the most beautiful hotel room i have ever seen.  there was a king size bed just for me, plus it was clean!

my home for 15(?) days

TFC (like kfc, only better) DAY #1

i am finally writing my stories about texas.  i have kind of been putting it off because i'm Insanely ready to be done with fire right now.  lucky, since i only have 2 days left. 

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on day #1 we had to hurry and get to the shop so we could wait for two hours to leave to the airport, where we could wait another 45 minutes.

hence, lesson #1:  HURRY UP AND WAIT.  a crucial element of fire fighting.

and lesson #2:  ALWAYS SAVE RECEIPTS.  the forest service gives you back the money you spend on hotels and baggage checks.  but only if you have your receipts.
     (i ended up losing one of my baggage receipts,
     and was really sad because i would of been out
     $60, but then i found it in the trash!  it looked
     like a boarding pass instead of a receipt...)


anyways.  the three flights were lovely.  my stomach especially enjoyed the first of the three.  in my throat!  smallest plane i've ever been on.  10 rows (i think) and one seat on each side of the aisle.  it was ridiculous.  and they said it was a smooth flight!!!

we met the other guys that were on the engine in abilene, where we flew into, at the hotel.  my room wasn't clean.  olive garden leftovers on the table and everything.  great...  i can already tell it's going to be a great roll (roll: the equivilant of your 14 days plus or minus a couple for travel that you are on a specific fire)

view from the baby plane

georgia o'keefe, the second

my orchid just bloomed - for the first time since i got it, a year and a half ago!  very exciting. 
they were so perfect the other day, so i started some georgia o'keefe training.

 even the ones that are dying are pretty.

haiku of the day:

i hate being sick
how do i make some money
if i'm stuck at home??