Spare time? Whazzat??
So... because I needed another project like I need a hole in my head, I seem to have joined the local volunteer fire department.
Seriously!
Not as a firefighter... I'm so not in shape enough to do that! But as of this afternoon, I'm the photographer/web/PR-person for the Frankton Volunteer Fire Department. Nifty, eh?
All this got started a few weeks back when there was a huge barn fire at a dairy farm a couple of miles from my house (no animals were in the barn at the time, thankfully). In the process of watching all the trucks go by... and by again... and back and forth some more (all the tankers were going back into Frankton to refill)... I went looking for the fire department's website and realized it hadn't been updated since 2007. So I mocked up a site in Wordpress and started talking to the Chief about taking on hosting/updating the website for them. (Yay for small towns... need to get in touch w/ the fire chief? Call the town hall and ask nicely and they'll give you his cell phone number. :-))
This afternoon, they had their first monthly meeting since we started talking, and I went to the meeting to give them a demo of the site and to meet the guys. Apparently they liked the site (and me), because by the end of the meeting they had voted me in (which gets me covered by their insurance at incidents), gave me a pager and a key to the fire station, and they're getting me a reflective vest and an ID. As soon as the latter two get done, I can start responding to incidents and taking pictures and video for the website, so my photography and journalism skills will get dusted off and used for something more than writing updates about the dogs. I'm still a little stunned at how fast the official parts all took place... I really wasn't expecting to walk out of today's meeting w/ a key to the station. Eep!
So now I'm working on pulling together updated info so we can make the site live, and I'm hoping to launch the new site by the end of May!
Wheeee!
I remember spare time. I do. It's becoming an increasingly vague memory, but that's okay...
Seriously!
Not as a firefighter... I'm so not in shape enough to do that! But as of this afternoon, I'm the photographer/web/PR-person for the Frankton Volunteer Fire Department. Nifty, eh?
All this got started a few weeks back when there was a huge barn fire at a dairy farm a couple of miles from my house (no animals were in the barn at the time, thankfully). In the process of watching all the trucks go by... and by again... and back and forth some more (all the tankers were going back into Frankton to refill)... I went looking for the fire department's website and realized it hadn't been updated since 2007. So I mocked up a site in Wordpress and started talking to the Chief about taking on hosting/updating the website for them. (Yay for small towns... need to get in touch w/ the fire chief? Call the town hall and ask nicely and they'll give you his cell phone number. :-))
This afternoon, they had their first monthly meeting since we started talking, and I went to the meeting to give them a demo of the site and to meet the guys. Apparently they liked the site (and me), because by the end of the meeting they had voted me in (which gets me covered by their insurance at incidents), gave me a pager and a key to the fire station, and they're getting me a reflective vest and an ID. As soon as the latter two get done, I can start responding to incidents and taking pictures and video for the website, so my photography and journalism skills will get dusted off and used for something more than writing updates about the dogs. I'm still a little stunned at how fast the official parts all took place... I really wasn't expecting to walk out of today's meeting w/ a key to the station. Eep!
So now I'm working on pulling together updated info so we can make the site live, and I'm hoping to launch the new site by the end of May!
Wheeee!
I remember spare time. I do. It's becoming an increasingly vague memory, but that's okay...