The weather has taken a turn for the worse, so I'm super happy that it finally decided to have a good snow yesterday! If there's no snow, being really cold and blustery is entirely pointless! >< It made for an interesting day of training and a busy night though. Live fire training is always lots fun, even if it's with all are chem warfare junk on too. Plus side, we where all very warm! Would have been fun to do it in the snow too but it decided to be calm until we started to break everything down, then it just blew in out of nowhere while we reloaded hose and threw the odd snowball.
Last night was interesting, for the most part it was all cold weather shenanigans tripping systems and cutting power to a small section of base. Which sent me and my crew on a wild goose chase to four different buildings at like 2 a.m. Only one of which actually had alarms going off (old school bells are soo loud!). My favorite was the beeping at the Wing Commanders place, I had to stop and take a breath before knocking on his door. The power being out and thus no lights being on making it that much more ominous. If someone was wrong I reaaaally didn't want to be the guy banging on his door and waking him up at 2 a.m., despite the fact he's actually super nice and as it turns out had just handled his place by himself. I was very happy to be out of there just about as soon as I'd showed up.
Alarm panel trouble shooting is always fun, which is to say not at all, my favorite button being the silence button! Order is restored, at least for my ear drums, so I was somewhat thrown off when I pushed it and the ringing didn't stop. Granted it was late so it took me a minute to come up with plan b after thinking the panel had just decided to hate, damn you Murphy! Plan b consisted of looking at the fire pump panels that had the old school bell style bells ringing and looking at all the fun buttons and considering which ones I could safely push without creating additional chaos. I'm generally an advocate for chaos, just not in these kinds of situations. Luckily I found the silence alarm buttons hiding up on the right just within reach, it's good to be tall, and my ears where saved!
The snow itself had been interesting all night too, every time we went out on a call it was snowing and the wind was blowing the snow that had fallen all over the ground making it look more cold than it was. On the way back in to the station it would stop again. The wind was still blowing but at least it wasn't blowing anything in our faces when we backed the truck into the stalls.
The only major downside to all the lovely snow, it canceled the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders trip that was supposed to come through = \ I was disappointed until I swung through the post office and picked up two packages, which totally made my day! The funny part being they where books I'd ordered almost two weeks ago that had been lurking there for the past week. Been so busy I spaced on them, so I'd thought they where what my family had sent me. So now I STILL have packages to look forward to and managed to surprise myself at the same time, which I find endlessly amusing in and of itself! I couldn't help but read one of them last night, I'm saving the other for Christmas. Real easy reading though, just the Savage Sword of Conan volume 11. I enjoy the artwork just as much as I enjoy the stories. I have the entire collection now and can't wait to put them all together after I move again this spring.
Best wishes to all of ya out there and Merry Christmas! = )