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1. The Group Read discussion for Chapters 1-6 is up! Come post your questions, answers, thoughts, questions, favorite lines, observations, long comments, short comments....

2. Happy Birthday to Erik! Alas, I saw the announcement too late to plan my menu, so I will have to have roast pork and Sapphire martinis another time.

3. I did make pizza last night. I tried using bread flour to make the dough and was very, very pleased with the results.

4. I also had my very first grease fire in the kitchen. Yikes! It was all my fault, too -- I just was not using my brain. I had filled a saucepan with water and bit of olive oil and brought it to the boil (the plan was to use it to cook the sausages for the pizza.) I got sidetracked washing the dishes, though. I looked up and realized the pot had gone dry. I turned off the burner and removed the lid. I neglected to move the pot off the hot burner, though -- really, where was my brain? -- and all of a sudden FOOM! the remaining olive oil ignited. So there I was with flames shooting up ten inches into the air, and all I could think of was "oh no! the microwave!!!!!"

So I pulled the flaming sauce pan out from under the microwave and realized that you really do need both hands to extinguish a fire. I have a fire extinguisher in the kitchen, but I couldn't remember where it was. (It was under the sink, behind the dish drainer and dish pan. ) By now my husband had heard me yelling and he came in to see what was going on. I put the pot down and he started for the sink to fill a cup of water to throw on the fire.

By this time I'd recovered my wits. I grabbed the can of salt that was sitting on the counter and threw salt on the fire to smother it -- it worked right away. (The microwave and pot seem to be okay.)

When my sister was small, she gave my mom with a present: a small coffee can filled with baking soda and decorated with crayon drawings of fire. She'd made it in Brownies. The idea was that you kept it by the stove so that you always had something at hand to smother a fire. I think I need to make one of those, since I cannot count on having a Brownie to make one for me.

I was also disturbed to realize that the smoke alarm didn't go off during this little adventure. So at the least I have a battery to replace. If I don't get it done this week, maybe I can get my dad to do it for me when he comes next week.

7 Comments

Your fire extinguisher was where?

Now you see why it needs to be in plain sight and easy reach!

Glad all is well though.

Oh, and never use water on a class "B" fire. Water is only useful on Class "A" fires.

Class "A" fires are those which leave an ash, usually organic material. A person on fire is called a "screaming alpha" in the Navy.

Class "B" fires are fuel fires, whether oil or petrol or cooking oil. These must be smothered by an inert material such as salt, or the lid to the saucepan or chemical fire extinguishers. Do not use coffe creamer. We blew the windows out of a 3 story stairwell in Great Lakes by sifting one cup of coffee creamer down to a lit zippo on the ground floor. Try denying that while you have no eyebrows!

Class "C" fires are electrical and electronics fires. Do not use water or you destroy the equipment and create a risk of electric shock. Use chemical extinguishers for electronic fires.

Class "D" fires are burning metals. If you have class "D" fire, it is best to push the metal over the side, into the drink. If you don't have an ocean handy, call the Fire Department. Do not attempt to extinguish Class "D" fires with chemical extinguishers, as some chemical extinguishers will catch fire themselves, particularly purple pottasium powder, PKP, and others will react with the fire to create hazardous fumes.

Damage control is a wonderful thing to know.

OK, I use the broiler for my Italian sausages.

Glad all turned out well!

A couple of years ago I opened my refridgerator freezor and got a lot of smoke! I tried to convince myself that "nah, can't be smoke, must be frost," but nope, it was smoke and my fridge was on fire!

Seemed like half of the fire department came to my home just to - unplug it!

That same week I read that actress Sigourney Weaver had a fridge fire too that did a lot of damage - really strange!

Franklin, thanks for the review. I know ABC from my nursing days (for some reason we were drilled constantly on fire safety...I will remember Pull, Aim, Squeeze, and Sweep until I'm on my deathbed, I think) but D is a new one on me. I promise to move my fire extinguisher to a more prominent location and keep in mind the location of the nearest ocean (and the unsuitablilty of coffee creamer for a Class B fire.)

But tell me, do Navy recruiters and promotion boards look for "grimly practical wackiness" as a desirable trait? What else could explain the minds that could coin a phrase like "screaming alpha" or would even think of dumping Coffee-Mate down a stairwell onto a lit Zippo? or come up with something like ?

I mean, I've been bored in an office before but when we got bored we just went to get coffee or something, we didn't go playing with butane lighters or even kitchen matches.... :)

Elena, I've got to know, how does a fridge catch on fire? That is a new one at me. At least you chose the Exploding Appliance of the Stars. No mere toaster fire for you, you did it Oscar-style!

Hint: Peony: IT'S A GUY THING! :)

My husband and his kid brother almost became "screaming alphas" one night out on the deck with a balky gas grill and some lighter fluid!

Let's not even talk about sneaking outdoors with explosives!

In college he and his buds found a deserted dump with an old washing machine. Can you say, "kaboom?"

"grimly practical wackiness"

In all honesty, it depends on the job. A lot of us get recruited for the Nuclear Porpulsion Program, because we are smart. Then we wash out because of stupid practical jokes. (Planting a phony car-bomb in my case, long story.)

We then get sent out to wherever they have need for us. Some become Bosuns, who have their own breed of wackiness. Some become conventional machinist mates, who (I swear I am not making this up) will drink a coffee cup of bilgewater or eat a urinal sanitizing disk on a $20 bet.

Then some, like me, become firecontrolmen. Firecontrolmen maintain and fire the weapons systems onboard surface vessels. (Damagecontrolmen fight fires and patch leaks.) Firecontrolmen also use the air-search radar and its onboard CCTV system to hunt gulls, frying them as they fly by the ship with microwave signals. Sometimes they put the CIWS (imagine an R2-D2 8 times his original size with a Gatling gun sticking out from under his body) on manual control and track people passing the ship with the gun. We pop popcorn with our surface search radar because the line is too long at the microwave in the duty mess. Ditto for hotdogs, though they are a bit trickier. We make up stupid jokes like "What happens when you reverse the polarity on an LED (Light emitting diode)?" "It becomes an SED (smoke emitting diode)."

I believe the Curt Jester defies explanation though. I shall have to learn his rate now.

All in all, KTC nailed it. Give 18 year old boys that kind of power and responsibility (keeping the world safe for democracy) and you'll have a lot of guys so desperate for a chuckle that they'll microwave a bird in flight for fun. Or pay a shipmate to eat a urinal cake. Or eat one just to make the FNG sick to his stomach.

Put on top of that having an Uncle who was second on the scene at the initial fire on the USS Forestall (aka the USS Forestfire) coupled with having to watch the video footage of that fire about 9 times during your tour, and you get a warped perspective. You want to know your stuff, but not think about why you need to know it.

To understand what I mean, click here http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/ships/carriers/histories/cv59-forrestal/forrestal-fire.html


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