Baby; Starbucks; Work;Balancing Act; Fire; Party

[bkdelong]

I'm home after a long day. It started with the Little Man coming into bed with us about 6ih and him half-asleep rolling from Mom to Dad to encourage playtime. Mom went to get her flu shot and straght to ork, I eventually pulled myself out of bed, got Will dressed, fed, Sesame-Streeted and off to day care.

Got home and settled into some work before my weekly Starbucks with boss, collegue and friend Sally Khudairi. I switched from my autumn favorite of a Pumpkin-Spice Latte to an Egg Nog Latte. I think I'll switch back. Had some great mind-meld conversations about ApacheCon activities next week and headed back to wrap up.

Finished a deliverable for a late afternoon client meeting and did some cleanup around the house. Got the dishwasher loaded, 2.5 loads of laundry done, living room and hallway picked up and vaccuumed and the dishwasher loaded, set-off and counters cleaned. Tonight was the ARC Monday Night Disaster Action Team Holiday Party so at about 3:45pm I put Kirky's awesome "Corn Pudding with Chourizo & Mushrooms" in the oven.

Somewhere in there I managed to get showered and have some back-and-forth with Sally prior into our conference call. Kirky & Will got home as I was headed out the door. I did leave Kirky a note as well as Will's night clothing downstairs so he was ready to go when he crashed.

Then comes the fun part. I left Salem at around 5:05pm and raced down Rt. 1 into Boston. My goal was to get to Red Cross by 6pm prior to my conference call starting. No luck. I think I made it to Mass. Ave just over the Harvard Bridge when my call started. So when I finally got to the parking garage, (driving with phone to ear via shoulder is quite entertaining), I had to balance phone to ear while donning my Grill Gloves as the pyrex was still piping hot. I chose to leave my helmet, hat and boots behind. I could always come back if there was a fire.

While still participating on the call I managed to go across the street to Bertuccis to purchase a gift card for the Yankee Swap and finally got into the office. I looked ridiculous - I also suspect I was making a great deal of noise throughout this entire process.

The call was 3/4 the way through when we got a call of a fire in Lynn. A 40-unit apartment complex. Woah. After waiting 10min I finally bowed out of the call albeit not as gracefully as I would like. However MAJOR kudos to our client who is fully aware and very respectful of the work I do for the Red Cross. I ran back to the garage to grab my gear and hopped into a truck.

We got as far as Beacon St. before we had to turn back to pick someone up. But since it was the holiday party, there was a massive amount of BC students there and all the cases were finished quite quickly - tho the complex had about 1/2 as many as originally thought. I'll post an article on the fire as soon as I can find one.

We headed back to HQ for our party. About half of the corn pudding eas eaten - not bad. There was lots of sugar from the BC students and some homemade hummus, meatballs and Shepheard's Pie as well. We filled up and did the swap. I ended up with a nice BC Latte Mug. How a propos.

I got my Red Cross nametag pin tonight....more and more official ever so slowly. I may go in tomorrow to help call 700 volunteers for a disaster drill. But I have a bunch of deliverables on my plate. Plus it's late and I need to take The Man to day care in the morning.

Winter is fire season - the holidays even worse due to lots of PAPER-wrapped presents, overloaded sockets, lit chimneys in addition to the heater accidents and stuff. Be careful, be safe, and be aware. I hope never to respond to one of your homes due to a tragedy but if I do, you'll be taken care of.

Comments

[whumpdotcom.livejournal.com]

ApacheCon always sounds like a great conference and I want to make it there one of these days.

[bkdelong.livejournal.com]

It's just a hop, skip, and a jump down from you. Come visit....there will be BOFs and parties and fun. Definitely something work-related....have them send you. ;)

[floppsy.livejournal.com]

This post didn't show up in my FLISTing ... all the others, but not this one. When did you post it???

[bkdelong.livejournal.com]

Late last night.