Just Another Saturday

Wake up, feed the dogs, make coffee. Take Fisher, the newly adopted (last May) Chessie, for a walk. (Shelby, the ninja-collie, goes to visit her Rottweiler friend Bruno on her own.)

Start working on laying out an article for Pomegranate 11.1 in Adobe InDesign.

M. gets up. We eat breakfast. I cut the grass at the rental cabin, which takes about 45 minutes. Drink water and cool down on the porch. (M. takes a a walk into the national forest, sans dogs.) Back to Pomegranate.

The article is about Paganism in Eastern Europe. At one point the writer uses letters that occur only in Polish, like the L-with-a-slash (sounds like "w"). They are not found in Book Antiqua, the journal's normal font, so can I sneak in a couple of letters from Times, which has everything?

The telephone rings. It's a fire department call. (I joined the local volunteers last January.) But it's not the usual telephone-tree person. Something about an accident up the canyon, but the caller is not clear about how we are responding.

I call the sheriff's office to check. Yes, they know about the accident. Someone is responding. The problem is, because of the location, it could be one of three departments.

"Thanks," I say. Do I go? What to do? The phone rings again.

It's T., our asst. chief. He has been asked to back up on a vehicle extrication--"jaws of life" and all that. He'll meet me at the little country store down on the state highway.

I'm running around, pulling on my turnout pants and boots, grabbing the coat, helmet, and supply pack, throwing them into the Jeep, yelling at Fisher that no, he can't come.

I drive the mile to the store, re-lace my boots. T. rolls up in the brush/rescue truck. (It's all we have, plus a tender.) He turns on the overhead lights, and we're rolling up the canyon, diesel engine laboring.

At the accident scene, the ambulance crew ready to load the victim. There was no extrication--he was riding a motorcycle! He went off a twisty curve and has a broken femur. Irony: he is a medical doctor, an anesthesiologist.

Everyone--rescue-truck crew from the other department, the Forest Service law-enforcement ranger who had been nearby, the sheriff and a couple of deputies--shoots the breeze for a few minutes and then disperses.

T. drops me back at the store. I can't wait to get home and get out of the heavy gear.

Half an hour after the first call, I decide that sneaking in the Times italic will work well enough. There is a smidgen of Hungarian in the article too, but Book Antiqua can handle it.