Right now I’m tracking the news about wildfires in a way I never have before. Both the house I’m selling and the one I am moving into are in danger from huge wildfires. How lucky is that? I could not believe that both would be in that situation at the same time. The one I intend to sell is more in danger than the one I moved into, so I suppose I can view that as a positive takeaway.
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For several years I have contemplated going solar, but always have been intimidated by the cost. Finally, I found out that it is relatively affordable at this point, and so this morning step one in the process began by taking away all my electricity. So I am at Cuppers enjoying a peanut butter mocha coffee and catching up on emails — and writing some. I suspect a lot of you have picked up a guitar at some point in your life like I did, and thought, “Gee, I’d like to learn how to play this!” Most of you strum it a few times and realize it hurts your fingers to push on those narrow strings so hard, and most of you give up. For those that stay with it, there is a second stage that comes along that is really frustrating that we call “crossing the B string.” You see, guitar strings aren’t logical. Five of them are tuned five steps (or intervals) apart, but the B string is only four intervals apart. Everything you expect gets messed up if you don’t make adjustments for the B string. It’s really annoying and you have to get used to making those adjustments or you’ll give up on the guitar. Later on, there are other times where you find chord shapes can be moved up and down the neck of the guitar and it makes things easier for you to learn to play the full range of the instrument in spite of that pesky B string. When I was married, my wife took care of all the plants in the house. She was the master at keeping them alive. When the plants were left to me, they invariably froze to death or died from lack of water. Sounds weird, because I love plants. I am a park ranger for cryin’ out loud. When you take it apart, it makes sense though. My life was spent managing natural systems and trying to keep them healthy while enforcing the law on miscreants as well. Natural systems don’t need me to water them or keep them from freezing or repot them when they become root bound. I protected nature from the bad guys while protecting the people from the bad guys as well. My favorite times were spent when I wasn’t doing any of that, and I was just enjoying the smells and freshness walking in the woods, exploring a desert Spring bloom, or cruising in my patrol boat and watching a bear swim across the narrow part of the lake. Being a firefighter/medic is a challenging and sometimes very exciting job. It’s also backbreaking hard work. One of the things I enjoyed most though, about being a fire captain, was having the opportunity to work with the fire marshal and do community education activities on fire safety. Among those activities, my favorite was reading firefighter stories to kids at the library and then talking about fire safety with them and their parents. |
Greg
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