SWARF & other things

i have no idea if this is an acronym or not, but it is my new favorite word...while touring an engine manufacturing plant, recently given an award for its good grade on going green by the DEQ, we (reporter and i) were taken down to the waste management room...amid the bins of metal shavings and oils was a whole section dedicated to the collection of what they call "swarf" - a sludgy mix of metal and liquid - it looks like a big pile of black goo, basically....the guy giving us the tour would only describe it as "real nasty stuff" ... such is the stuff that swarf is made of....still, such a fun word (even if it does pertain to something quite nasty)

this is from what i shot tonight - just a stand-alone feature to run inside - from a family open-gym play night...i just liked the graphics of it and her being caught mid-air right above that center part in the mats.....

this is exactly why the phrase "controlled burn" should really be considered more of an oxymoron in these parts....it should also be another notch in the belt of the common sense lesson "don't burn a big pile of leaves next to your barn on a windy day"....perhaps there is a bit of intended irony on the behalf of whomever coined the term "oxyMORON"
just finishing up for the day when a reporter told me about a call on the scanner for a field on fire that spread to a barn, now fully engulfed....is a house threatened? animals in the barn? possible explosion? the reporter didn't know and wasn't going but i could go check it out, right? okay, okay....so i make my way out into the country and finally find the spot....as i was shooting, the wind shifted a bit, and the smoke coming toward me made things look kind of cool..."watch out breathing in that smoke" one of the firemen says...i told him i was moving in a second..."you don't know what he may have had in that barn" he adds...hmmm, i'm thinking, farm, poisons....so i slowly say "do YOU know what's in the barn?" cos if i'm briefly inhaling just regular smoke or something toxic, i kinda wanna know, right? so he says, "no, that's why i'm standing upwind...i ain't stupid" after about a second i look over "hey, did you just call me stupid?!"
i knew he hadn't meant it that way, but it was kind of funny all the same and fun to give him a hard time, too....
good times in Monroe!