MSH Alert Level 2

The USGS raised the Mount Saint Helens volcanic advisory to Alert Level Two yesterday. Last I heard, the wind patterns indicate any ash from an eruption would head straight my way, but there's still no indication of any real danger this far away. You can read the latest updates at the USGS MSH Volcanic Activity site.

Lousy Email

Apparently, as is regularly the case with my provider, my email is screwed up again. It seems I can send email, and can recieve junk mail, but some email is bouncing - including email from Yahoo and Hotmail.

So if you're trying to reach me, just hold tight. It'll fix itself... eventually.

*wanders off, grumbling*

Rumblings

I was just joking about the whole Mt. St. Helens thing this week, but it seems that there's more activity lately than the last two "incidents" in subsequent years (like 1998 and 2001 or something, I don't remember). Anyway, the USGS released a Notice of Volcanic Unrest this weekend, which states, in part, that "Seismic activity at Mount St. Helens has changed significantly during the past 24 hours and the changes make us believe that there is an increased likelihood of a hazardous event."

They've closed the visitors' centers and evacuated the immediate surroundings, mostly due to likelihood of a steam release that could hurl rocks into the vicinity, or cause a localized mud and ash slide.

I seriously doubt this indicates any serious impending eruption, and I'm a good distance away, really. Only danger I'd face here is ash fallout (as in 1980) and/or mudslides washing down the rivers. And odds are even that wouldn't be any real hazard.

Makes for interesting blogging though...

Fire Training Begins

Saturday marked the first day of Firefighter I certification training; a nine-hour day composed of about half classroom work, half field exercise. Most of the classwork revolved around organization, accountability (keeping track of firefighters at a scene), and safety. The second half of the day was spent putting on and taking off full turnout and SCBA gear, over and over and over.

Couple things: First, it was overcast and cool, but the turnout gear is still incredibly hot. My t-shirt was soaked - no, really soaked - with sweat by the end of the four hours. Glad it's not summer any more.

Second, the SCBA pack weighs about 35 or 40 pounds. It's bad enough to be picking it up and strapping it on, then taking it off and putting back on the ground, but the fastest way to don the pack is to lift it directly over your head with your arms half-way in the straps, and then drop it behind you and let it fall onto your back while your arms slip neatly into the straps. (Or, as was often my case, your arms slip mostly into the straps, and the waist belt gets tangled and caught on the frame or one of the shoulder straps, and the pressure gauge gets hung up under a strap or the PASS alarm catches on something...) Point is, lifting a 40-pound air pack over your head over and over and over, makes for sore muscles if you're not used to it. And have I mentioned I'm not used to it?

Lastly, the dang mask really seemed too small for me, and I had a hard time getting a good skin/mask seal which meant constant fiddling with it to get a tight seal before I could pull my hood and get my helmet fastened, and my gloves are definitely too small, which means they were very slow to put on.

Why the whole issue about being quick? Obviously when you get toned out you need to get dressed quickly. But my immediate concern is the State certification test, which requires you to go from street clothes to full turnouts (boots, pants, coat, hood, helmet, gloves) and SCBA, with your PASS alarm set and breathing air... in under 2 minutes.

By the end of the day, I hit 1:56, but my protective hood wasn't seated 100% over the mask. No skin was showing - that's a definite don't - but the hood was pulled down maybe 1/2 inch across the top of the viewplate in the mask in what our Captain called a "nice pirate impersonation." Argh, matey.

We've got plenty of time to practice it, and I suspect I'll streamline the process as we go. Getting larger gloves would be a help, as would not getting straps, hoses, gauges, and the like tangled up every time I drop the thing on my back. I'll try to get a picture up one of these days, or for the high-speed internet crowd out there, maybe even a short (under 2 minute!) video clip if I can talk one of my classmates into being the photographer.

Meantime, here's hoping the sore muscles are gone before next class on Tuesday...

Muy Rápido

Running myself ragged this week, but wanted to update y'all while I had two minutes:

Tutoring Biology, A&P, Micro, Math, and Spanish this term, 19 hours a week

Teaching supplemental instruction classes in Human Biology as well

Firefighter I cert training starts tomorrow; runs eight weeks or so

I need to sleep more

My new book, Fright Night: What Went Down, came out this week.

I'll try to add at least a cover to the front page of the web site when I can

Mount St. Helens is stirring again: here's the story if you want to read it

I live a few miles from Mount St. Helens

If it explodes, I'm taking a week off from school...

Nothing, Really

Man, I can't believe it's been a week since I posted anything. Guess the whole "gotta get my balance back by cutting back on things" bled over into this blog.

I spent the week catching up on a lot of mundane stuff not worth blogging about (e.g., mowing the lawn, doing laundry, vegging), but things will be getting a little busier soon. School starts on the 20th, so I'll be back to at least one class (probably Spanish 101 - an easy A for me since I already speak it) and back to tutoring. I talked to the coordinator of the tutoring center, and she'd like to see me signed off to tutor both English and Spanish, as well as Biology, Anatomy/Physiology, Microbiology, and Math. It doesn't really matter to me if I can tutor a dozen subjects or just two. It's not a case of being busier or working more, it just means I'll get some priority for scheduling and so forth, since I'd be more diverse if I was certified to teach several subjects.

Aside from school and work coming up, this month also marks the beginning of firefighter training which lasts about three months. I'm looking forward to it, since being an EMT/FF makes things way more flexible at the station I respond out of. I don't have specific dates yet, but it looks like Sept 25 through early December, and runs Tuesday and Thursday nights, and Saturday all day. More as I know more.

To Sleep

A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by
One after one; the sound of rain, and bees
Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas,
Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky -

I've thought of all by turns, and still I lie
Sleepless...

- To Sleep, William Wordsworth

Balance

Spent a lot of time the last few weeks struggling with too many things at one time. Some I brought on myself, others I had to do to get where I want to be, and some just came out of nowhere. End result, however, is that now I have way too many irons in the fire and too many things pulling me in too many directions at once.

I had a plan, once upon a time, and it was a good one. But I've gotten sidetracked recently, and it's time to get things back into focus. Problem is, I'm overwhelmed with all this other stuff that pretty much is keeping me from devoting my full attention (read: time and energy) to what I really need to do.

It would be like carrying a really heavy backpack. If you keep adding more weight while you're standing on solid ground, feet planted, you could carry a tremendous amount of weight. The load could be stacked above your head with heavy weights, and as long as you keep your balance, you're fine. But the minute you get off-balance, lose your footing, slip to one side... the load shifts, and everything comes tumbling down. And once that happens and you're off-balance, you just can't carry the same amount of weight, and you can't get your balance back without first lightening the load.

So I've started cutting some of the extra things out of my life. Some of them I won't miss at all; others have been very hard to let go. But until I can get my focus back - my balance, as it were - I need to pare down to the bare minimum and get moving again so I can eventually pick up all the things I can't carry right now.

I know this is all kind of philosophical and obscure, but I guess I'm in one of those moods. Bottom line, on a practical level, is that I have to focus on just a few critical things in life for now until I get back on track and know for a certainty that I'm headed where I want to go.

Something's gotta give. Something will give one way or another. So I need to decide what, before everything collapses without me having a say in it.