Second Tree Blog » fire

Another Saturday Night in the Driveway

Tim — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:11:06 +0000

The weather was too perfect to not have a fire in our driveway last Saturday. It was a small group — only three families — but it was a fun evening.

The classic image of the evening was of four girls aged 5 and under all simultaneously roasting marshmallows:

That led to some gooey mess with one of the girls (Sadie):

Which led to a very attentive Molly:

Meanwhile, the boys were playing with their Go-Gos — using some oversized Janga blocks to build structures for them (these structures were later destroyed by Girl No. 3 in the first picture in this post — younger sister of the two non-Wilson boys in this picture):

So, where was Benton with all these young kids running around? Asleep on his bed, face down and fully clothed. He’d been at a sleepover the night before and had stayed up until 4:30 AM! The sad thing was that he was the one who suggested the fire in the first place, and he was the one who helped collect and cut up the firewood! Nevertheless, the next day, Sunday, he was up for more firewood collecting with Carson in preparation for the fire we’ll have on Halloween (or, at least on the night that trick-or-treating happens, which isn’t Halloween, which is just odd):

Neighborhood Car Jumps Neighborhood Humans

Tim — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 02:12:57 +0000

Last night wound up as another “fire in the Wilsons’ driveway” evening (followed by night golf at Smuirfield, which was followed by a little Texas Hold ‘Em — just another night in central Ohio suburbia). Julie, Carson, and Alana were en route to Virginia to return her mom to her home and to attend Julie’s aunt’s birthday party, so Benton and I were the only Wilsons in attendance.

Early on — while the pizza was still being consumed — Chris got out the electric remote controlled car that he used to race when he lived in Connecticut, and Benton rigged up a makeshift ramp for it in the road.

After the first jump, Bill decided to add some “thrill” to the experience by putting himself (partially) in the flight path. After the car easily cleared him, he talked his daughter into extending the feat…

…and then, talked his son into extending the jump even farther!

Oh, the adrenalin!

Side Benefit of Moving from Texas to Ohio — Less Hurricane Impact. Right?

Tim — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 12:48:12 +0000

I’m still not entirely clear on how Ike managed to hit the entire state of Ohio harder than it hit Austin, TX, but that’s apparently what happened. Granted, what we’ve had was nothing like what hit Beaumont, Galveston, Sour Lake, Crystal Beach, and the like. (On the Crystal Beach front, Ron took a look at some pictures and confirmed that his mom’s beach house is totally gone — hard to tell if even the foundation is still there!)

What we got was almost no rain but high winds for several hours on Sunday afternoon. The winds brought down a tree in our backyard as well as a slew of leaves and branches. When I took Molly for a walk on Monday morning, I counted five trees of notable size down in the neighborhood. We lost power on Sunday evening between 6:00 and 7:00 PM, but it came back at 2:30 AM on Monday morning. We lost power again on Monday at 12:30 PM, and it did not come back on until 11:15 that evening. I spent the afternoon at a Panera Bread getting work done, while the neighborhood kids (school was cancelled) spent the day playing in the cul de sac. Benton and a friend from down the street built a fairly impressive leaf/branch fort (which included hauling branches out of neighbors’ yards four and five houses away…into our driveway), which we’ll get pictures of up at some point.

A neighbor down the street grabbed pizza and lasagna for a cul de sac dinner, and we got the kids down to bed as it got dark. At that point, we built a fire in our driveway and sat around chatting with some neighbors until the power came back on. Since we all have electric water heaters and stoves, hot water was at a premium (most had been used up by bathing the kids), so we put a coffee pot on the fire and heated water for tea, which went well with the s’mores that Julie and the other wives sampled.

There is no school again today, but we have power (for now). Maybe this wacky week will settle back down by tomorrow! Oh. Wait. Tomorrow is an already-scheduled “late start” day for the kids’ school. Maybe Thursday, then?

Fire-Fanning Gadgetry Misapplied

Tim — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 00:06:00 +0000

A couple of years ago, I tracked down a hand-cranked bellows sold by Campmor. This was shortly after Benton had gotten going with coaxing campfires back from glowing embers when he woke up in the morning. Frankly, I was a little concerned that he would hyperventilate some day, as using his lungs to fan the flames always held more appeal than wandering around and collecting an adequate supply of tinder.This is a nifty little device — it looks like a fishing reel, and when you turn the crank, it blows air. It was so popular that, with the first one, Benton managed to give himself a blister from blowing it on flames long after a fire was going. And…it wore out after a few months. So, we got another one shortly after we moved to Ohio, which we left at Bob’s farm in West Virginia.

The question is: does Benton really know how to use it?

Hmmmm. THIS flame is already too big!

And THIS flame…um…flame?

Thanks to the distraction of sleddable snow and a couple of cousins, Benton did not spend the entire weekend: 1) blowing on fires that were long past needing fanning, and 2) experimenting with how much powdery snow he could displace by blowing on it.