Up In Flames

At around midnight last night, I was sleeping well but abruptly awoken by fire truck sirens. We live close to the freeway so it’s not that uncommon to hear the occasional siren, but these were really, really nearby and it kind of sounded like they stopped right outside the window. That’s when I put on my glasses and sat up, then noticed that the whole bedroom was orange, and the orange light shining through the mini-blinds was much brighter than the orange city street lights generally are. That’s when I peeked through the blinds and saw flames directly out the window, no more than 20 feet away.

I had no idea what was going on, all I could see were flames really close, and they were very tall flames and stretched across the parking lot the length of about three vehicles. I woke up Lizzie and we grabbed the Cat. Then we ran down to the garage to jump in her car, mine was in the outdoor parking lot just a few parking spaces away from the fire. We could smell smoke in the hallway as we went down to the garage, it smelled like plastic burning, so I thought a car or cars must be on fire. You see, I was trying to logically think about what was going on out there instead of jumping to the conclusion that it was some kind of armageddon out there.

So we drove out of the garage and around the block back around to see what was going on in the parking lot. We saw the firefighters putting out a car completely engulfed in flames, and there was fire burning on the cement in front of the car as well. They put it out rather quickly.

From our perspective inside, it looked like a lot of fire and it really was pretty close to us. More fire than any little extinguisher would put out, and with it being out by cars which can explode I got a little nervous. We kept hearing loud pops as we were evacuating, probably fuel lines in the car blowing up or something of that nature.

We realized it was obviously under control, so I went out to the crowd of residents standing by the front entrance and asked what happened. No one knew for sure but it sounded like the car just caught on fire as they were driving into the parking lot. It was an 1980s Saab, probably had some electrical issues or something. No one was hurt, and no other cars were ignited.

Waking up in the middle of the night, looking outside and seeing nothing but flames right out the window is definitely a new one for me. It was pretty nerve-wracking, and I think getting the hell out of there wasn’t the worst thing in the world to do. Next time, I might grab the fire extinguisher and try to get a better view before rushing out so quickly. I couldn’t even see that it was a car from where we were, it looked like three cars on fire. I’ve never seen a car burn up quite like that.

So I got back to sleep pretty late. It took a while for the nerves to calm down. Tonight I’m tired from the lost sleep of course. At least I can feel glad it wasn’t my car on fire, and that nothing was lost but someone’s old car and no one was hurt. I feel pretty bad for whoever that was, hopefully they have better insurance than I.

I’m Such A Geek

Quite eventful the past couple of weeks have been. I went up to Fargo for a printing expo last weekend, saw some demos on vehicle wraps and even got to get up there and do a little cutting and squeegeeing myself. Is squeegeeing a word? Spell check doesn’t seem to think so. Oh well, you know what I mean.

Vehicle graphics is something I’ve always wanted to do, I once had big dreams of designing paint schemes for race cars. The plan was to move out to Charlotte, NC and the gig would be available instantly, of course. I’d be there in Charlotte designing paint schemes for NASCAR, and within distance to design for the open wheel teams in Indianapolis. Well, the world doesn’t work that way. I can’t see myself way out in North Carolina, I don’t know anyone anywhere near there. But, who says I have to go there? The company I work for is just getting into wide-format printing, so a little vehicle graphics might be in the question. I’ll get a little wide-format printing and signage experience and I’ll have the right stuff on my resume for it. That’s sort-of promising.

So I got to visit good old Fargo for this expo. Stayed up in Fargo at the Radisson Friday night, and then on Saturday night and Sunday I paid a visit to the family up in Cooperstown. Did a little snowmobiling on Sunday, and of course every muscle in my body was sore for the entire week afterward. It was about 50 degrees out so the snow was melting and very sticky, which made the snowmobile ride very bumpy and it was hard to turn. It was kind of like driving a car with no power steering, something I’ve had to do a few times before. It was still a lot of fun. The river was still frozen enough to ride on, and we saw a lot of deer out running around the area. One of the deer that got spooked by the snowmobile I was riding had leaped over a riverbank and landed flat on his head. I thought for certain he was a goner and had snapped his neck, but he got up and kept on running.

It was quiet around there, though. My older brother has been living in Fargo for a few years, so my visits home always included him, until this weekend. He’s moved on to greener pastures and moved out to Colorado. He made what I think is a good move and decided to use his GI bill and go to college, he found a school he liked out in Denver. He’s about 30 years old now, but I don’t think anyone’s ever really too old for college. I had classes with people older than that, one of my favorite classmates in college was as old as my parents and now he’s doing well as a graphic artist in an ad agency.

I’m quite excited for my brother, but it was very quiet and odd without him and his rambunctious yellow lab around this past weekend. Not having him nearby is already taking a toll on me. Yeah, I miss my big brother. We’ve been very close over the years, and I’ve counted on him for a lot. But he’s gotta do what he’s gotta do. Who knows, maybe we’ll move out to Colorado too some day, we’ve been talking about doing that for a long time. Probably not anytime quite soon, though.

First we’ve got a wedding, and that’s going to be happening June 15th, 2008. We’re slowly moving into the planning stages, we have some time so we aren’t jumping to any conclusions yet. We know that we want it to happen in Minnesota, we’re going to check out some lake resorts up north this summer. I was informed that June 15th is also the wedding anniversary of my grandparents (on my Mom’s side) so that’s kind of cool.

I’ll keep you posted on the planning. In fact, I bought the domain name dustinandelizabeth.com so that we can have a wedding site. I haven’t decided if that’s geeky or not yet. No need for me to be self-conscious I guess, everyone thinks I’m a geek already I’m sure, and that doesn’t really bother me anymore. The dustinandelizabeth.com web site doesn’t have anything on it yet, but eventually we’ll use that for photos from the wedding, announcements, and even RSVPs. I was talking to a friend who recently got married, and he said that one of his biggest frustrations was that 75% of the RSVPs didn’t come by the deadline. Perhaps an online RSVP will cut that percentage down a little bit. I’ll announce when I have something on that new website, I just haven’t had any time yet.

Talk to y’all later… (yes I said “y’all”… I’m practicing my Charlotte, North Carolina accent dont-cha know).

Shouting From The Rooftops

This month, Lizzie and I are celebrating five wonderful years together. I’ve never really known exactly what to call our relationship, I can’t really call it just “dating” because it’s been something more than that. What I can say for certain is that it’s been wonderful. I’ve traveled some bumpy roads, and Lizzie has held on with me the whole way. Thanks to her I’m happier, more confident, and just plain better in every way than I ever have been my entire life. Every day is better than the last.

These few years have gone by so fast. It seems like that chilly evening of February 13th, 2002 was just a short time ago. That was our first date, an evening out to dinner in downtown Minneapolis. I was even more shy and nervous back then than I am now, and on our way to dinner I rear-ended a car on Nicollet Avenue with Lizzie in the passenger seat. I felt like such a fool, and I figured I’d completely blown it. But it all went uphill from there, and at the end of the night she asked if I’d be her Valentine (since the next day was Valentine’s Day), and I ecstatically accepted.

On February 16, 2007, 3 days after our fifth anniversary as a “couple,” we drove together to downtown Minneapolis once again on a similarly chilly evening and we had dinner at our favorite restaurant. This time, I avoided Nicollet Avenue, and didn’t rear-end anyone. But just like our first date, the evening ended with a question. I asked Liz to marry me, and she said yes.

Now I’m not usually one to show affection or emotion in public very well, you probably know me as a pretty low-key kind of guy. But right now I feel like shouting from the rooftops that I’m the luckiest guy in the world! I’m so happy that within the next one to one and a half years I’ll be marrying the love of my life. I’m so excited about everything that lies ahead.

Some New Fish For Our Aquarium

We added a couple new fish to our aquarium yesterday. We’ve had it set up for about a year now and figured it should be established enough to add a couple more. We started out with two Long-finned Rosy Barbs, then a couple months later added two more. One didn’t make it past about three months but the other three still remain, healthy and rambunctious as can be.

We decided to add a small algae eater, he’s been hiding in the back behind some plants so I can’t get a photo of him right now. But our new Gouramis are pretty photogenic, we got a Powder Blue Gourami and a Dwarf Gourami. They’re really quite interesting fish. They’re labryrinth fish, like bettas, which means they will swim to the top of the tank and grab a little bubble of air in order to breathe. Here’s a little more info on that:

A labyrinth fish is a fish that uses a special organ called the labyrinth to breathe air from the surface of the water.

How can they do that? When they gulp air from the surface it gets forced into the labyrinth organ. In the labyrinth there are lots of small maze-like compartments of thin boney plates called lamellae. The lamellae are covered with membranes. Blood passes through the membranes and the oxygen is absorbed into the bloodstream.

If a labyrinth fish ends up out of the water it can stay alive for a long time if it stays moist. In fact they can even crawl across land to a different body of water if they have to. The climbing perch has a labyrinth organ so it can breathe out of water, and can even climb trees.

Source: About.com

The Gouramis seem to be a much more peaceful fish than our barbs, and fortunately as of day 2 everyone seems to be getting along. Some photos of all the fish are below, sorry they aren’t the greatest, fish aren’t very easy to photograph. They won’t stay still!

Our long-finned Rosy Barbs

Our new Powder Blue Gourami

Our new Dwarf Gourami

You can also see the fish and other photos of our aquarium on the ‘Our Aquarium’ category of the PhotoBlog.

The Things You Own

Sometimes it feels like the things you own actually own you. Years ago I used to want a lot of things, but I was just a kid in school so I couldn’t have a lot of it as I had no income of my own. These days, I just feel like I’m constantly paying dues and it kind of makes me feel like I don’t have much control over my own life. I depend on way too many things. I guess there’s something in life that makes us always want what we can’t have, and we’ll go over our limits to get things we don’t even need.

My car sure does control quite a bit of my life. I pump hundreds of dollars in gas in it every month, it’s really my only way to my job as even Minneapolis’ massive transit system doesn’t reach that far. This past week we had to bend over backwards and jump through quite a few hoops because my car was leaking coolant and therefore wasn’t drivable. Since the water pump is driven by the timing belt on the GM’s Quad Four engine, it’s a lot more difficult and expensive to replace than it typically is. So I had my fingers crossed as we had it looked over at a new garage that had come highly recommended to me.

The garage found that it was a little plastic part between the radiator hose and the water pump which had deteriorated because of the Extended Life Dex-Cool antifreeze. Apparently GM used to highly recommend you put this special antifreeze in your cars, but there’s been so many problems with it that they stopped using it in new cars. I guess It becomes corrosive and eats away at all the parts, which I got to find out the hard way.

So it wasn’t as expensive of a fix since it wasn’t the water pump, but still a little annoying. I was lucky to be referred to my new mechanic. I think most other places around here probably would have just made me replace the water pump even though it wasn’t broken. That’s the trouble, if you slip out even the slightest hint of a thought that it might be the water pump, then they’ll think that they don’t even need to convince you it needs to be replaced and they’ll do it even if it doesn’t need to be done.

I have constantly went in to have something fixed and had mechanics come back acting like a salesman, telling me all kinds of multiple things that need to be fixed that I didn’t even ask them to look at. I once went in to a shop for a quick oil change and they took the wheels off to look at the brakes. I had just had a full brake job done 3-4 months prior, and they claimed it needed to be done all over again. I asked why they even had the wheels off on my car, and they claimed my oil change included a full tire rotation. I then had to ask them to rotate them back to where they were, because the tires on the back were older than the tires on the front and a rotation wouldn’t make any sense. Then they told me they had realized that and had already put them back in their original positions. What a bunch of liars.

They pointed out a few other problems, and they seriously weren’t going to let me leave with my car unless I let them fix it. They claimed that I had to pay $3200 in repairs before the car was safe enough to drive. I told them to either give me the keys or have the cops come and impound it. They gave me the keys and I went and had it fixed somewhere else, the other place (a dealership in my hometown in North Dakota) didn’t even mention any of the “obvious problems” the small chain shop had. The kind of “scare people into fixing things” sales tactics that some chain mechanic shops use should be illegal. It’s just completely wrong and it sickens me wondering how many people they rip-off every day.

I think this independent place I was referred to will be a lot better, I felt a lot more comfortable with this place and like that they fixed the one thing that was actually wrong, and not a bunch of other things in order to make extra cash off of me.

I’m learning that one of the most valuable things to have in order to get by fairly is to know people. Everything is all about networking and connections. If you don’t know anyone, then there’s no one out there to look out for you, and you’re going to keep going to the wrong places and getting cheated. Unfortunately, networking has always been one of my weaknesses, I often find myself having difficulty putting my thoughts into a social context, and I have a little bit of a social anxiety problem that used to be much worse, but I’ve gotten a little better, especially after taking some risks and facing things more confidently.

I’m sure I’ll encounter more challenges ahead, I’m learning how to deal with them a lot better. I have more risks I’ll need to be taking very soon, but for once in my life I’m starting to really feel like I’m ready for it.

Talk to you again soon.