I started the day responding to a chimney fire in a garage even before I had breakfast. An hour later I was back at home, but was only halfway through my bowl of cereal when an alarm came in for another chimney fire. Fire department lore has it that calls come in threes, so after the second call we all expected that we’d be seeing each other soon. I had two photoshoots to do today, and it looked like my schedule for the day was under serious attack. Fortunately, the first shoot was with our dispatcher’s family so he was going to be just as late as I was. I called the second family, who lived a couple houses down from the first fire, so they understood my excuse as well.

After the second call I mentioned to Jay our dispatcher that if we were going to have another call today, 4:00 would best fit my schedule. We did the shoot with Jay’s family at their home, and then I scarfed a quick but delicious meal down the street from our studio. That left a few minutes before our next shoot at the studio, which involved 12 people and four generations of one family, all dressed in Victorian clothes. After that was finished, Lori and I closed the studio. I took the Sprint out since it was clean from the earlier photoshoot, and enjoyed a short but refreshing ride. I got back home a little after 4 and driving down Rose I noticed some funky smoke coming from Glen Martella’s home. It didn’t look normal, but at the time it also didn’t seem serious enough to warrant stopping. Five minutes later though we were paged to Glen’s home for fire number three of the day. Time of the call was 4:15, just a few minutes off schedule. Glen is a member of the FVFD, so I’m sure he’s going to be hearing a lot about this one. After that fire, we had just enough time to watch Home Alone before heading over to Mary and Glen’s for Christmas Eve. The photo is of Mary’s garden, and Glen’s lighting handiwork.