Happy New Years Eve!

Well, it's NYE for me, but a day early for the rest of you, I suppose.

Yesterday was our town party, with the Chili cook-off and Ice Stock. It was pretty cool, and cold, since it had snowed all night. Station 2 had about 3 inches or so of light fluffy snow, but there was less in town. However, it snowed all afternoon. Anyway, the chili was, for the most part, good, though I highly disagreed with the judges selections. The Kiwi's made a tasty venison stew, and passed it off as chili. The venison was nice and tender, and had a teryaki flavor to it.

The fire dept chili was the best, and I'm not being biased here either. The public kept coming around, and we ran out, with just enough to give to the judges. The chili was very meaty, and had a good mix of onions and peppers, with a nice spice that snuck up on you as you continued to eat it. I think we had the best mill van decorations too.
The Heavy Shop's chili was pretty good too, nice and meaty, but not as subtle on the spices as the firehouse chili.
I didn't hang around for a lot of the bands, but one of the dispatcher's husband is in a bluegrass band down here, called Phat-ass Bluegrass. They were really good.

The band that was up when I first got there was pretty bad. I heard some of the other ones later on, and they seemed a bit better, but I wasn't interested in staying out in the cold to watch.

Here's the list of bands playing, and part of the sign in front of the stage.


At 3pm, I went over to one of the Air National Guard dorms. They have 2 dorms to themselves, that they have every year. You can't get in there without an invitation, and they even have locks on their lounge doors (though after seeing the entertainment system they've set up in there, I don't blame them). They had the fire dept over for burgers and dogs, flown in fresh from NZ the day before and cooked on real charcoal. Oh my was it good. There was also cheese and crackers, fresh onions, tomatos and pickles for the burgers, mini quiches, shrimp cocktail, and hot wings with real blue cheese dressing. So tasty. I hung out with them and watched the football game, and then headed over to my room, where I realized that the chili and hot wings were making me quite uncomfortable.

There was a huge 'girls only' party, complete with strippers going on in my lounge, but since I wasn't feeling very good, I stayed away. That kind of thing isn't really my scene anyway, so I hung out in my room and read and ended up falling asleep early, until the party moved outside my room around 11:30. I just rolled over, turned the iPod back on, and fell back to sleep. I was still very tired this morning though.

Today at work has been very slow. We really aren't doing much of anything, though I am going out in a few minutes to help Cav with his pump test. I get to go flow water, which isn't too exciting, but it's something to do at least.

And with that, I leave you all. Some of you I'll likely talk to tomorrow sometime in the evening or something. Just so I skip the 'mad rush' at midnight.