The Very Gentle though Smoky Laundry Room Fire, also DoaB recharge and other sundries

BLOT: (07 Sep 2013 - 05:44:39 PM)

The Very Gentle though Smoky Laundry Room Fire, also DoaB recharge and other sundries

Was watching OOG play some Saints Row IV—once again thinking that, as a game, it looks less playable and more an extended controller-driven fever dream—when I realized my subconscious had been aware of a tinny, repeating sound. "Oh, a fire alarm," I said to Sarah before getting up and going to make sure everything was ok. Turns out it was in the laundry room of our apartment, possibly the dryer got too hot or possibly some lint caught caught in the machinery. A fast acting neighbor had extinguished any visible/open flames, burning his hand in the process, but smoke was still pouring out of the door. One poor woman kept standing there, holding the door open, so I went up to get one of my old rusted 15-pound weights to act as a doorstop. The four or five seconds spent in that smoke filled room was enough to make my eyes feel like they were about to pop and to start my head pounding. Now I understand why smoke inhalation can drop people. I was prepared and it was rough.

Sarah called the Huntsville fire department after the smoke refused to die down, and they came out and quickly had everything safe. I think the fire-in-itself [philosophy joke!] was already taken care of by the neighbor, but the laundry room was pulling a Centralia, PA and releasing constant under-fumes.

The funny anecdote part of the day was when Sarah went downstairs to let them know that the FD was on their way and to get people back a bit, there were several neighbors down there with cell phones, and all of them were using said phones to take pictures of the smoke and, once they arrived, the firemen that no one else had thought to call. Hah.

---

And now, for something completely different, I think it is also time I sat down and got the old Dickens of a Blog back up and running better. Looking back through my Archives, the blog has been on about "one post a week, at most, as average" since April, and most months all year long have had fewer than 10 entries. Sure, I'm still posting stuff to Twitter and G+, some of it being effectively stand-in blog posts, but it's not the same. For a number of reasons. Not sure why I have slacked so much, a mixture of tired-from-work and oppressed-by-summer-heat, at least lately, but whatever the cause...

...for the next couple of weeks, I'm going to get into blogging again, with a shot for daily posts—mixture of life updates, reviews, news commentary, RPG write-ups, shout-outs, link sharing, and so forth. Something I've planned for a while but never sat down and brought about was to set up a series of backlog-posts so that when I feel like writing something new, I can, and when I don't, I have something I can edit and post instead (e.g., reviews for stuff that don't need to come out right away, or were posted elsewhere first). If, after two or three weeks, the idea of Doug-the-Blogger feels weird, I might stop, but I definitely need to keep writing because I want to try and write more, and more seriously—short stories and library science research and literary criticism pieces—and the best way to write better is to write and keep writing. It serves a double purpose.

So, what's new? Lots of stuff, most of which I probably couldn't recall enough to bring forth. Hey, has anyone else noticed that the examples given by G+ for the "Bragging Rights" part of the "Story" field seems a little...I don't know? White trash? Or maybe a weird mix of really-young and middle-aged? No "I cured cancer!" or "I set the world record for pickle eating!", just:

The "etc" is the best bit. "After high school, me and Tammy popped out some brats. Et cetera..." I think Modest Mouse wrote a song about that...

Was kind of thinking I would have more sundry, but I think I'll save it. Give me something to write about. ;)

Me in 2013

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: September 2013