February 2006

Spirits, parties, gas and movies.

Our culture is so impoverished spiritually that when someone dies nobody even feels comfortable showing grief. We stood around in that store, a collection of awkward strangers sharing small talk and chit chat and not one of us touching on the subject that brought us together or discussing our grief.

I tried to tell his daughter that his spirit would be with her and she didn't understand at all what I was talking about. Nobody had talked to her of death and spirit and matters of life beyond living. I hope someone will, or that she'll get in touch with me to ask.

My neighbor Ken had a little party tonight, that was nice. I popped over and had a juice with them and did some training with Sarah. She enjoyed being somewhere else for a change.

Teaching Quesla went alright. I was reluctant to go because I felt sleepy and tired and shitty. Turns out I had a gas leak. When I got out I perked up and did alright at her lessons. When I returned home I right away smelled the gas, very distinct. I called the gas company then looked around some more while on the phone with dan. Suddenly I noticed a burner knob turned just slightly away from off. Whoops. I thought it had a safety prevention so it couldn't leak like that so I was never careful before to ensure it's definitely off. I called the company back and cancelled the emergency.

I had to air the place out in spite of the frigid temps outside and then I lit a bunch of candles to burn off what might be left of the gas in the air. Much better.

So I'm home after the party now and had a bath and washed my hair. watching a drama "My Country" with Juliette Binoche. I love that actress. It's about the post-aparthied brutality that continued in South Africa. It hink. It's just getting started. I'm eating sugar snap peas. :-)

today's oprah

Big to-do over saying "you beautiful creature" from a white woman to a black woman. The blacks, super-sensitized to being regarded as less than human, see it as a reference to animal nature. The whites, however don't mean that. We say that phrase in reference to Faerie. To call someone that is to suggest she is more beautiful than human, above human, a fey creature. Now how is that white woman, delivering this exquisite compliment, supposed to realize that she's delivering a base insult? Indubitably, we need to treat non-whites more respectably but I sure wish that those others would give us a little benefit of the doubt! We're just people the same as anyone else and we're not clued into every little nuance. We're not going to be sensitive to everything. Far better if you'd just up and gently explain the issue and investigate, did that person mean insult? Did she mean what you heard? Hell, that could go a long way in anyone's system! Sheesh already! On the matter of today, well I'm continuing to plug in the archives. I'm up to October 16th now. I phoned Quesla, a neighbor and friend. She's a flake and blind and goofy and strange and sometimes she really irritates the hell out of me but she means well and she needs a friend and teacher and lets face it, I'm no day at the park. I can cope with being annoyed sometimes, I certainly do it to others often. So I'm teaching her witchcraft and getting deeper all the time into a relationship I'm reluctant to follow. Well no matter, perhaps at the bottom of this I'll find a gem and a close friend. So I phoned her to confirm tomorrow's class and mention i might be out of sorts as there's a memorial I'm attending tomorrow for a friend who's suddenly died this week. Very sudden. I will be crying but right now I'm thinking about it only on the surface. I'll write about it and get it out of my system later. So she's in crisis. Period cramps and a diving blood sugar. She's already so bad off (diabetic) that she can't think of what to do for herself. Well I had her gnawing on an apple unaware that her jaw was clenching too bad and she hasn't even got enough teeth to bite it. No matter, just knowing I was phoning back and she wasn't alone was enough to make her start being active and thinking a bit and she finally remembered a stash of sugar cubes for the problem. I guess I saved her life today because if I hadn't called she probably would at least have been in coma when her husband got home. The nurse who visited today did not do a good job telling her not to eat lunch! I dreamt I was the pope this morning. heh. The pope was an old man who lived in saskatoon in a lovely old house full of wood and things with a secretary and a couple other house workers to help out and people visiting too much. He died and willed me into the job! Here I was with authority, respect, and the last word on God. Only problem is I had to remember to phrase it all in the Christian paradigm but suddenly I wasn't being argued with, told I'm crazy, and dismissed, I was being heard and helped and able to be effective and useful. Weird dream, heh. I had a house that was large enough to look nice (I can't declutter this little cottage for anything). I had a budget that was reasonable and adequate. I had a secretary and I was dying to find out if I could actually just dictate my writings instead of wrecking my wrists to record my thoughts! Heh. Pity the dream ended and I woke up. Isn't that always the way?

Death sneaks up

I managed to actually get up at nearly 11am today. That's good. I'd like to stay on that now, getting up at 11 is early enough and not so early that it will be hard to switch when the next show starts up.

I am heading for the computer store where Keith worked. This Keith is not the one I may have referenced at some point to whom I foolishly proposed marriage. If I haven't mentioned that, good, because it's a stupid story.

This Keith was a computer tech and salesman at the consignment store. Really friendly and easy going, smart and funny. He had a 12 year old daughter, a sweet girl. She often spent time at the store while he worked there. He later got an apartment above the store and when he was caring for her she'd be up and down stairs as she pleased. Her parents are divorced.

Recently, I didn't hear what day, Meighan and her father, Keith, were walking along the street near the store, probably shopping or something, and Dad just fell down dead. Just like that. I believe they're doing an autopsy to determine why, but I'm sure it was a stroke. He wasn't very old, not even 40 yet I think, or just over 40, but he was a smoker and overweight, not quite obese but damn near it. He didn't do any kind of physical fitness and thought it was funny and macho to eschew healthy eating.

Now his poor girl is minus one very loving and affectionate father and what's more, will wonder for many years what she might have done to save him, if there was anything she didn't do or could have done. She will rage against the unfairness, against God, against her father's ghost.

He was a good man. Foolish with his body, but he'll be missed by all who knew him. So today they're holding a pizza afternoon at the store for people who want to come by and give their condolences to meighan or whatever.

I wish grief could bring back the dead. Or that anything could. The dead wish it also. I wish life were fair. I wish little girls didn't have to lose their fathers.

Death is getting closer to me. Now I have known 4 people who have died. First was Hector, he died of brain cancer. He was a member of the hippy circle I used to know. That circle really died after he did in many ways.

Second was Chris, he died last year. I knew him on the internet, though I didn't know he had a chronic heart condition. He was a young man under 25, just getting his life started. Next was patty. I knew her online too, like Chris I'd known her since '97 on the autism circle. They both died in the same year, 2004 I think. I have a poor grasp of time although there's a blog entry from when Chris died. I was closer to her and Chris than I had been with Hector, although all these were living too far away for me to visit. I hadn't ever seen Patty or Chris in person.

Now someone I know fairly well, though never visited him at home and didn't get together just to chat, but who lives in town.

It feels like my immunity to funeral grief is breaking down. That's ok. I don't know why I escaped this deep grief so long. Was I too weak to stand it? Was I lucky or magic? I knew it wouldn't last forever. The only way to not mourn others is to die first! To have made it this long without anyone truly close to me dying is a miracle as it is. I'm 42 years old and I still haven't lost anyone who's a dear part of my life, who's loss will touch me regularily.

I grieve Keith but he wasn't my close friend or a lover, brother, father, or even an uncle. (oh yes, an uncle I knew as a kid died recently too, but I never cared for him and didn't know him for 20 years so it's not a loss to me personally.)

There will come a day when someone close dies. Eileen or Leonard next door? Valerie? Dan? Rick or Adelia? There are people in my life regularily whom I'll miss. Not many, but there are. I'll probably outlive them all, I've always felt I would. Therefor, I'll learn grief for real some day.

For today, I hope to find the right thing to say to this little girl to help her feel like there will be a day when she'll smile again. She's such a sweet girl. I hope that this doesn't change that. I haven't met her mother but I have my suspicions the woman isn't pleasant. Her ex-husband, Meighan's dad, was a pushover, and Meighan is a conflict avoider.

2 days work

Damn it's good to be done. I hope this site doesn't censor my image links! I'm going to start searching for the software to set up my own blog on my own webserver for myself. Someone out there must be selling it and maybe it doesn't cost a fortune (a gal's gotta dream), eh? If anyone out there has any leads to either a site they know for sure doesn't monitor content or where I can find affordable code to host my own blog for myself, I'd love to hear from you!

moved to blogspot.com

Ok, just got done importing the archives. Now I don't know if they'll do the same but at the moment I've moved to http://villasubrosa.blogspot.com/.

Comments aren't moved with me, just the archive. I'll be posting there from now till I move again, or, if I can find the software, set up a private blog on my website where I'll be able to do as I bloody well please.

long job

I'm done for the night. I really wanted to get it all done tonight but clearly it's a bigger job than I realized. Tomorrow evening I'll be busy first with dog school then with work. It's going to be bitterly cold too but I'll plug in the car at work, it'll be alright. I hope I can get the rest of this done tomorrow but I'm only halfway through page 4 of 9, working backwards from 9. I'm surprised, I didn't realize I had this many blog entries! At one point the blogger.com interface made me input a text string from image, the "real human" verification thing. LOL I guess I was going fast as well as for so very many hours. I've been at this for nearly 12 hours straight, after all.

arriving

I'm moving my blog for the 2nd time to the 3rd home. I started it on my home website and then moved it to a public blogging site, livejournal, because I hoped for a bit more traffic, and because the input format didn't require me to write my own code, set up my own page archives, etc. Livejournal however has removed my ability to set images in my entries. I didn't have a paid account to allow uploading of images but I'd just link them to the external url on my own webserver. This was going just fine till today or yesterday. I presume they noticed I'd posted images of the cartoon controversy. Now I don't know if this blog will likewise prevent me but a couple people suggested that this site might not be censoring content that way. So I spent 4 hours editing the template and about 2 hours agonizing over why it wasn't showing up this afternoon, then finally found in the help files that I had to republish the entire blog and how. So now it displays like I want it to. So I'm slowly doing what I had to do at livejournal, importing old entries and back dating them till the whole blog is here. If you read back (not sure WHY you would) you'll see that some entries deal with issues on my original blog or moving to livejournal. If I ever find the wherewithal to set up an automatic formatting system for a blog that I can run on my own webserver that will please me to no end. I could then just put the whole shebang on my own server and to hell with censorship and serving the moneyed masses. If anyone out there knows of a free blog site that doesn't make users maintain any form of standard in what they write or post, and isn't overwhelmed by porn, please let me know! It would be worthwhile to go through all this again. I just hope that they let me customize the look if I move. Gotta have my red and gold, LOL.

more stupid cartoons

I like this one. Giving equal time to the west (but a cartoon of jesus hiding behind a crusader's sheild and sword might be more pithy) I over Bush with a bomb Hat! Hope ya like it. I thought it was funny.

yet more cartoons

Well I'm all in there reading my daily comics in digital format when what do I come across but this: Now like I said, the more you freak out when someone teases you, the more they tease you! I know, I oughtta know better than to help out the bullies and all that but from where I sit it's the guys throwing rocks and torching things that are acting like bullies.

Movie: Osama

Just watched a movie called Osama. It's about a girl living under the Taliban in Afghanistan. Her father and uncle have died in the wars (drafted) and her mother and grandmother are all that's left. These three women are unable to go shopping, or earn any income, or barter for bread, or do anything in fact except slowly expire inside the walls of their home. They struggle to go out anyway.
Mom is a nurse who sneaks to the hospital till the Taliban raid it, arrest all the foreign aid workers, and close it down. Desperate for a solution the mother and grandmother cut the girl's hair and dress her in men's clothing. Mother uses her new son as her escort because under the Taliban a woman may not go out without a male relative to escort her.
She may not show any portion of her body lest a man become aroused and suffer impure thoughts (yah, boys, I'll give you some impure thoughts...) Yah, like you can make men stop thinking with their penises just by hiding women under tents....
This of course is why these rag-heads wind up sodomizing each other and little boys and/or go nuts and start blowing everything up, committing holy suicide and so on. I tell you they're fucking nuts.
I feel sorry for the muslims who come here to escape this insanity then get stained by the actions of the very people from whom they fled.
So anyway the mother convinces a shop keeper who was a dear friend of her dead husband to take in her "son" as a shop assistant to feed the family. Not long after this employment begins the Taliban draft all the boys in the village to becomeTaliban warriors.
I just don't get how these maniacs expect to get ahead in the world if they kill all their men and starve all their women. Before long the girl, who is an utter wimp and sissy, gets found out. First she gets found out because she's such a sissy and besides fairly delicate in features and limbs, then they test her by hanging her in a well (nice guys huh?) She spends the whole time screaming and when they yank her out she's bleeding down her legs.
Now I'm not sure if it was just rotten luck and she got her period, or if what they did to hang her caused her to get it, or caused her injury which would not have injured a boy, but they see this blood and pronounce her a girl and she's arrested and sent to jail.
So comes the day of judgement. No fancy courtroom or judicial process here, just an ugly old fucker in a turban deciding how they'll die. first he pronounces an execution on a foreign journalist for filming a women's demonstration (start of movie, broken up with water cannons and rubber bullets) and the convicted man is taken down with machine gun (we only get sound effects thankfully.) Then he pronounces one of the foreign nurses (infidels) guilty of profanity and orders her stoned to death. She is buried in dirt up to her waist and the village pelts her with rocks till it kills her (again we get the gist, not the graphics).
The little girl, about age 13 or 14, is "forgiven" then because "she's an orphan with nobody in the world" (I guess she was protecting mom and grandma as they'd be killed for this ruse) she is handed over to an old grey bearded elder in the Taliban to be added to his harem.
He trucks her home in his donkey cart and tosses her inside then locks the house back up from the outside. The women in there prepare her for her "wedding night" while telling her their own tales of woe and capture and how miserable they are now. The movie ends with the Mullah Sahib grampa taking a ritual bath after walking the young "bride" up to his bedchamber and choosing her own special lock. He locks up all his women in their rooms for the night and each has her very own padlock. Luckily again the movie has far too much taste to share the graphic bits and instead uses inference at this point to let you know the old paedophile has raped the girl without you having to see her degradation and weeping. We never do see what happens to her mother and grandmother but it's a fair bet their skeletons still sit on the cushions in their dusty old dwelling, having sat indoors to death.
If you don't mind a tragic ending and subtitles this movie is a dramatic tour de force. The imagery is savagely beautiful, the language liquid and sibilant coming from the women and yet somehow barbaric and cruel when uttered by the bad guys. The walk in another's shoes is transportive and awakening. It reminds us that no matter how bad we've got it, there's always someone worse off!
It's remarkable to see this village with it's dusty ruins, it's utter lack of wild life or greenery, and it's babbling rabble of ragged humans scrabbling in the dust for a spot on the dung-heap of the most oppressive religious regime you could imagine.
The greatest wonder is how on earth does that country remain populated even with nasty old men raping young girls in the guise of marriage? I truly and deeply pray for salvation from these insane people. They do indeed seek to take over the world and dominate it with their madness and they are savage enough, barbaric enough, hungry enough and violent enough to plunge us all into a world war from which we may not recover. they may even do it over some stupid ink drawings.

oops

I was in the kitchen moving birds around in the dark. See, the baby bengalese are ready for their own cage. Now I have 3 finch cages I'm using. small, medium and large. the zebra finches were in the large but had quit breediing not long after I acquired it. I left them in anyway because it seemed cruel to take them out. I put the bengalese into the medium and they bred 6 babies. Now I had 8 birds in the medium and 2 in the large. The small has always been used as a "holding cage" for the babies but I have to get them sold pretty soon if I'm going to crowd 5 and six birds in that cage. However, it's fine for a pair of old grampy birds who don't breed so I moved the zebras into it and cleaned up the large cage and I'll put the babies in there. They can spread out and I don't have to make an effort to sell them as I could easily fit up to twenty of them in there before I had a crowding problem. At that point a paper ad would be worthwhile. So I'm in there moving birds around and it's all fluttery flutter and beep and chirp and grabbing birds in the darkness with all the lights off and a flashlight to pinpoint them (and make sure I don't grab the parents).
Then I heard the PDA make it's "connect/disconnect" sound effect. It does this when you put it in the cradle, when you turn off and reboot the PC, when the PC crashes, or when the PDA turns on with a reminder notice. I went in the living room and the monitor was dark. It's never off when I'm home! Unless the video drivers have crashed. I try moving the mouse in case somehow the "turn monitor off after N. minutes" setting was enabled. NOpe. I check the little lighted switch on the power bar (individual switch for each outlet on this device, it's nifty). Nope. I swear and hit the reset switch.
That's when I remember I'd turned the monitor off with it's onboard power switch (first time ever) in order to darken the room so the birds can't see my hand coming at them. Oopps. PC reboots and crashes on reboot... Now it's running but damn I hate when I do that and I wonder if there's any data loss anywhere.
Oh, and this movie sucks. It's a pile of cliches built on one another and why do they keep shoving keanu into such shitty scripts? Is it that he doesn't know how to say "no" or has he got such terrible taste himself?
I'm turning it off and finding another...

he's watching me!

Hehehe I told Dan about this blog finally. Been feeling really close and safe with him. Now I'm feeling all raw and exposed. He told me he's actually read it some time ago and in fact it was part of his decision to give up the bottle. That made me all teary eyed.
I know I prayed that exactly that would happen but I really didn't think it could. Firstly I didn't think he was still interested enough in me to pay attention nor look for the blog link. Didn't think he could remember either. However I did know he likes to out-sneak others as much as I do and I sure as shoot would have done it and done much as he did, read it without saying anything. However I'd not have been able to keep my mouth shut as long.
Only thing, well, years of lying to make himself look bigger or smarter or richer, or whatever, has left me wondering if he is saying it to give himself more "face" or did he really read it? If he did, why isn't he mad at me for it? If he didn't then will he get mad at me when he does in order to catch up and bulk up the tale he's told? Either way he definitely will read it now that I've told him about it and he's said he's read it. Or maybe he's really actually read it and didn't get mad at me. I don't actually remember what I've written except that it's awfully raw and honest, as that seems to be something blogs allow. It's fitting, you know? To talk to the invisible strangers who might read this as if they were your pretend friend from childhood. Maybe he just plain understands. But then why don't I feel like he's made amends then for it? Maybe he doesn't feel it's needed since he's truly been very good to me.
To be sure it's only a token gesture I need that says he understands, not something grand or painful or anything. I don't need diamond bracelets or humble service or any bullshit like that. Just a sincere expression of regret, I guess. When it seems right for him. At least though, if he has read this thing in it's entirety I dont feel as powerfully needing to vent my anger to him at a later date as I've done. I've spent a lot of time biting my tongue, wanting to tell him with power just how painful it was for me.
I guess I must have written that in here. I'm too cowardly to go back and read my own archives just now though. I don't read my own memoirs till they're dusty archives to me. When the power of the feeling is just nostalgia and then it's safe to go back and reminisce. I guess that's what I need in an apology, is some expression that tells me he realizes what happened and how much it hurt me and that I don't have to worry that he thinks I floated through this engagement carefree and oblivious. I know I need to put away the pain and anger, put it on the symbolic shelf next to his beer bottle and my pot pipe. It can only sour my life with him and I do so want to make things work. I don't want to find myself thinking things like "that's just like him" or "what else could I have expected from him?" I want to see him as a strong loving man, as my equal and my other hand (left or right, doesn't matter, I'm practically ambidextrous).
Lets face it, I'm no prize wrapped in shiny foil either. I come with a fine set of hangups, a matching set of baggage and more eccentricities and quirks than the dogstar nebula on a bad day. I love that crazy man. I still have trouble believing he could really love me back. Heh. If I don't know by now, when will I know? Well, when the ink is dry on the marriage certificate, then I'll really believe it. Then he'll be mine. Sure people can still desert a marriage partner, divorce happens, annulments too, but even in this day and age a marriage is still not entered into lightly by many.
Ever wonder why so many folks "just live together" for so many years and then insist they're as good as married but still can't quite bring themselves to make it legal? yet that legal paper has powerful advantages in times of trouble. A legally married spouse is legal next-of-kin who can sign hospital care papers, take care of important financial problems, and is usually even the one person allowed to stay by your bedside in ICU day or night. I imagine hospitals are more compassionate these days with non-married partners but it still makes a difference. Also in matters of finances and property with the government it makes a difference. Socially too, you are more respected as legally married mr. and mrs. you really are.
In our case additionally it's vital to the immigration process to make him able to live and work in Canada which is our intended goal. We're united in our desire not to live in the US. I think if Clinton were still in power or some benevolent dictator type working for the common good he'd not care so much but even then he's always preferred our northern environment. for me, I'm a proud canadian. I feel very patriotic about my country. That being said, i really must look into getting an american flag to hang with my canadian flag (but a bit lower as it's a foriegner) on the house. Just so he can see the flag he's grown up with all his life. Heck, his parents fly one on their house, as so very many americans do. It's an odd thing in canada to park a flag on your house but perfectly common in the states.
I'm not realy sure what it states when they do it. Whether it's merely decoration, or ensuring nobody forgets where they are, or showing some sentiment of pride or approval of the state of the nation, or something else again. For me to hang a flag is actually in reference to this american custom. A way of saying to any americans who come by "see, we're proud of our country too".
Oh how I do ramble when I'm tired....
I worked much too late. Got a note from the stage manager begging me to wash the rehearsal room floor wednesday night. Now I don't wash the floors on wednesday nights, I do them sundays or thursdays. I know the reason is because wednesday the present company vacates and thursday day she's going to be crawling around putting down tape lines and markers for the next company's play. They start rehearsal on friday. However I'm so utterly put out with work that I'm giving not one ounce of favour or extra to anyone at all. If he contacts me and offers me the $30 worth of wages to come in to do that on that night, fine, but otherwise fucking forget it! I answered her politely enough simply stating that I don't have time wednesday, only sunday or thursday, and so would do it tonight (sunday) and then I did do it. That's what's got me so very tired and up this late into the morning.

my take on the danish muslim cartoon series

Ok, yes it's insulting. At least as insulting as "down with the west" and sending terrorists out to bomb people. But GET OVER IT ALREADY! All these damn maniacs burning up their own cities and streets, degrading their own homes which they cannot afford to fix up in the first place and that's supposed to make us not ridicule them? If your neighbor gets mad at you because you mocked his slovenly digs and hairtrigger temper and he sets his house on fire and stomps around in his yard pulling up the weeds and beating his rottweiler, are you going to suddenly respect him? For that matter if he sends burning debris over the fence and sets your garden shed on fire, will you respect him more? I would post the stupid things here if I had an account that allowed pics but I don't so I'll have to link them from my website instead: Wonder if livejournal will have a fit on my head? If so, contact me and I'll mail it to you. I really think these people need to get their heads out of their asses. And before you pull a "how would you like it if" please be aware that I'm a Witch and I suffer this very indignity on an annual basis at the end of october when children dress up as sick, mean spirited old women and call themselves witches. When we're said to consort with the devil, eat children, sour milk, kill crops, and a host of other untrue propaganda crafted against us by sadist gay monks in the 1500s who extracted "proof" in the form of tortured confessions. You really need to accept that the rest of the world isn't gonna get you and you gotta get on with your life. Don't go smashing up your own cities (or mine for that matter) just because some people far away aren't dignified enough towards you.

wild dream

I started the dream as a tenant renting an apartment in which 2 rooms were let out to other tenants by the landlord (and no choice to me). Yes, parts of my apartment belonged to strangers! Weird dream. So then I had a van that had an old mattress in it and I was going to freecycle it but noticed the girl in one bedroom's mattress was shot. It was landlord supplied, a foamy, but had worn holes in it on both ends where the shoulders are and was just horrible. I offered her mine and my van became a boat in the process of moving the mattress and then the whole apartment became a boat and we were sailing. That was cool. So there we are cruising the harbour and we pass a floating house. Then we pass a few more floating houses. They're from hurricane katrina, washed out and still floating around out there completely intact and furnished. I wonder if we could loot them. I wonder if theowners could find and salvage them. i wonder if they're all mouldy. Then we see a whole neighborhood floating, still intact, even the sod between the houses and the little walks and I think I saw trees. A floating island of homes from the flood. We could see furnishings and houseplants and curtains through the windows and the temptation to scavenge was just too great. Scavenge, explore, anything! We tied up to the mass and set out our little dock over the swampy lawn so we'd have something solid to walk on and that's when we noticed this island was occupied! Turns out it was a floating tourist display, from a previous flood. Some enterprising people had set it up as a museum and turned a community center into a gift shop and run boardwalks between houses. Most were locked up and you couldn't go in, only peer from the windows. All in all it was very dangerous but they'd stabilized it and there it was out there floating away. A whole neighborhood of intact houses that had floated away after a hurricane flood. In this case, not katrina, but "hurricane ophelia" from some years before. No scavenging here. Weird dream. So much for my dreams of avarice, LOL.

oh my, how alarming!

I was just taking my vacuum downstairs at the end of my work for the night.  I paused and set it down to replace a rug I'd moved earlier.  Suddenly the alarm went off!  LOUD LOUD LOUD!!!  Like old school bells all over the place ringing and ringing without stop, in every corridor and room another one going off like mad.  big ones, little ones, all red and all clanging alarm.  what had I done?  Then I remembered Richard was welding in the shop. 
I hot footed it downstairs wondering as I opened doors whether I'd meet a fire on the other side.  Any fire I did meet, I reasoned, would as yet be a campfire or at worse a bonfire, not deadly yet.  Of course something COULD have exploded I suppose but that didn't occur to me.  What did occur was that I was probably supposed to be heading out of the building, not towards the site of trouble.  However I was the only other person there and if there was trouble my aid would be important.
Richard was fine as he was coming out of the shop but the shop was filled with acrid welding smoke.  He wanted to know where was the panel and the key to open it?  Well I know these things and while I scanned the board filled with keys, the clangor jangling my every nerve and my ears, he went off to find a place quiet enough to call the fire department and tell them there wasn't a fire (we hoped anyway) just welding smoke. 
Having spotted the key with it's bright yellow tag I hoofed myself speedly up through the dense clangor to the panel in the lobby at the extreme other end of the building, feeling energetic and alive where before I'd been dragging my feet all night.  Got the panel open and tried pushing TROUBLE SILENCE then TROUBLE RESET and finally settling on ALARM SILENCE and a blissful peace fell as all the big and little red bells shut their yaps and went back to sleep. 
While Richard did yackity yack on the propshop phone I raced around very excited and energized checking every nook and cranny feeling very important and very brave.  Each corner I rounded and door I opened I wondered if there'd be a conflagration to greet me.  Each time only quiet musty darkness drowsed in the sleeping building.  At last I'd covered every space (the alarm light said "main floor" yet the shop is in the basement so I certainly didn't trust the alarm light).  Definitely, positively, without a doubt, the alarm was the smoke detector in the shop and Richard's welding had set it off.  So I left the panel, afraid to hit the reset and have the detector sense the smoke again and set off those horrid jangling bells again.  After kidding Richard about not setting the place on fire unless he can be sure he's blameless, because insurance would give us more than we'd ever sell the building for, I headed home feeling more alive and invigorated than I'd been all week!  Richard looked a little the worse for wear smoking a cigarette and calming his nerves.
Richard is the shop carpenter at the theatre where I clean.  He teaches a class at university during the day and his wife works full time in the day.  He sleeps in the evening and works in the theatre from 2am -8am then spends mornings with his daughters who go to school only in the afternoons while they're still young, which is also when he goes and teaches at the university in the drama department. 
I rather hate having someone around when I'm working, I feel restricted and inspected and distrusted, but as people go Richard is ok.  He isn't interested in chatting in the least and I often feel like an annoyance if I try to speak with him, but he at least keeps to his own business and leaves me to mine.  I do miss feeling like the building belongs only to me.