Saturday, December 29, 2007

Where's the fire?


So it's Saturday morning, I just finished making myself some french toast, when I get a loud knock on the door. I peek in the window and see a firefighter! I let the firefighter lady in, and she was suited up in all the gear: the pants, the coat, the hat, and the heavy fire extinguisher. She asked if I knew of any fire and I told her that I had seen some smoke outside my window. She peeked out but it was gone at that point. Then she went on to the next apartment. I went outside on the outside balcony and saw 2 firetrucks parked outside, one with a ladder to the roof of my building. Wow! There were like 10 fire people inspecting for I guess a call about smoke. They all just took off; I don't think they found anything. But it was exciting for like 5 minutes anyway. Oakland Fire Department! They were in the news recently too b/c they were short fire people and were trying out forgoing the initial exam to encourage applications. Of course they got inundated with applicants and it got sketchy where it seemed like applications of people with relatives on the inside seemed to get through before the cutoff. Anyway.

Oh, I should also report on my holiday activities a bit. The Saturday before I got to be part of the wedding of a friend from high school. Lovely wedding! So heartfelt and sincere. Wore a big pink dress, the picture above. (I purposely picked a flattering picture, nice huh?) Kind of a whirlwind experience and a bit scary now to know that my friend is married. Ahh!

At the wedding, too, I got to be surfeit with girl talk. Sometimes you need that stuff. Another friend asked me if I would go out with a firefighter. I really didn't have too much of an opinion either way. But you know, hmm, firefighter. Hello Mr. Fireman!

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Dive another day!

So this is my second painting, a painting of my dad from a photograph. I think it could actually still use a lot of work but I'm going to give myself a little break from painting and maybe contemplate it some more before charging ahead with touchups and revisions. Painting is so much harder than I thought!

Let's see, in other news...I signed up to do skydiving! One of my coworkers has been planning to go at a place in Davis and a few of us Alameda County peeps have signed up. The plan was to do it today, though I had decided that I wanted to delay until the new year when out health benefits kicked in. Turns out it wasn't going to happen because of the weather anyway. So we live to dive another day! Actually going to place and seeing the plane and learning about the whole experience really allayed a lot my fears about it all. I"m actually quite excited to do it, just not for a while! Woo!