Firefighting & reading evolution

It was a Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic night. It's really such cool volunteer work.

Couple'a interesting things tonight:
It was, yes, a textbook, I think that's just the way of the world now. But it was about firefighting. Naturally, I found this super cool, because of my big firefighter brother (he's more than solely firefighter now with his promotion, but is certainly still that). So, that was exciting. Even though I did a lot of reading about SCBAs -- SCBAs, people, are self-contained breathing apparatus ... duh. I liked reading it, except every page seemed to talk about death. That wasn't so cool, particularly when we're talking about my brother's job. It was all about how if you don't use SCBAs you could/will DIE and how if you use them wrong you could DIE or how it's more complicated than simply relying on their low-air warning and really, you could DIE. This is something I knew, just kinda weird when you have a very close face you can put on all the warnings.

Anyway. The other thing that was interesting is that while the tables and figures were mostly a lot simpler in this book, they are actually getting easier. They don't freak me as much. There was less swearing, in other words. Still swearing, but less. There was one flow chart of a Sample Air Consumption Test that was showing how to do such a test with seven little stations and all, and that was pretty crazy. There was also (hey, there goes a firetruck!) a figure showing which states are OSHA states and which aren't -- Massachusetts isn't, interestingly enough. Neither is most of the midwest and a good chunk of the south. Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are, however. Don't remember if this was for anything-OSHA or just for these firefighter standards.

So there you go. Me reading out loud, enjoying firefighter material, encountering lots of tables and figures and swearing less. There you go.