Fire!

Vacation is over. Back to school, and am tired today. My voice box is in shock after the week off :-)

Interesting thing happened on Sunday. We smelled smoke in the front of the house. Assumed that a neighbor had a fire going. Thought nothing of it. Went out to O'Naturals for breakfast - awesome joint in Acton. Came home.

Still the smell of smoke. Very strong in the front of the house. Could not smell it inside or on the back porch. Very strange. Susan went outside again and noticed that there was smoke coming out of the chimney. Okay, we had a long, lovely fire the night before - but there was no fire in the fireplace now. Opened up the flue and noticed that there were red embers above and behind it. And smoke billowing!

Susan called 911 (her first time!) and soon there were engines and sirens roaring down the street. Men in full gear (not sure what they planned to do with the axes!) stormed in and took charge. Alls well that ends well - seems like for some strange reason there is a depression on the backside of the flue where leaves, etc had collected, and these had caught fire. The firemen got it all scooped out, and cleared the fireplace and removed the flue and grate. When they left, all there was for us to do was clean up the mess and recover from the adrenaline rush. Susan dealt with the firemen, while I captured the entire thing on film (one must have one's priorities right). Will post the pics when I get a chance.

Then a strange thing at school. One of my students, Sothanara, had his house burn down several days ago. Poor kid. He is handling it much better than I would be under the circumstances. Did give him a break on his homework though. That excuse is bullet proof!