Very nice Thanksgiving this past weekend. Went to Philly on Wednesday right after work, met up with Ryan and did some drinkin', then made my way to my Dad's for dinner Thursday afternoon. Dinner was good, and uneventful right up until I was about to leave to head to my sister's to sleep over, as there was no more room at my Dad's. Anyway, his next-door neighbor comes charging in barefoot screaming about a fire in her kitchen. My dad grabbed a fire extinguisher, and I followed after him. As we're heading across the driveway, the neighbor was saying "You're not going to find him! I know you're going to look for him but you won't find him!" Of course, I had visions of either an undocumented worker chained in the attic to help up with chores, or maybe it was her invisible elephant, Sparky (my dad's neighbor is always a bit, shall we say, unhinged) Anyway, I fully expected to find a kitchen roaring in flames, or maybe when we opened the door it would come roaring out, _ala_ "Backdraft(Backdraft on IMDB)":http://imdb.com/title/tt0101393/. Instead we found the neighbor's son, shirtless, tugging at the door of the oven, with lots of smoke coming out. Apparently the door had stuck, either from the violent tugging or it had just locked or something. Anyway, I suggested we pull the stove out from the wall and unplug it, so that whatever was smoking wouldn't get any more heat (I never did find out what exactly was in the oven). A few minutes later, the first cop showed up, and he did us one better by dragging the stove all the way out into the front yard. Then the cavalry came. I swear, those cops and firefighters must have been dying to get out of the inane after-Thankgiving-dinner conversation, because I think no less than 12(!) emergency vehicles showed up. They even set up floodlights, which was funny because they were set up so far down the street that they did no one any good. I "took some shots":http://feralboy.com/photoalbum/photos/?folder=20031127_thanksgiving, but they didn't come out all that well.

When things calmed down, and the firefighters had set up some big fans running on a generator in the front door to suck the smoke out, it was generally agreed that the neighbor would be Not Good In A Crisis.