This morning at work I got my fifth and sixth burns – these ones are quiet impressive because I was holding the screen that had the donuts on it and I was shaking it out over where I put the icing on and when I lifted the screen up it got my arm. My initial reaction was “dang it!” then I wanted to tell someone because it truly is impressive. They’re much bigger and deeper than the other burns I’ve gotten – the first burn I got was when I dipped my fingers in the oil, the burn never really did show up but it sure hurt. The second, third and fourth burns were oil splatters – the third and fourth ones took longer to heal because they kept getting aggravated by my clothing. And my fifth and sixth burns are deeper burns because they were caused by the hot metal not oil splatters. I was showing one of the chefs, he just shook his head at me and told me that in job interviews when they ask if I have any interesting hobbies I can tell them that I collect burns – they’ll be so impressed. One of my co-workers asked why I keep burning myself and I said that it was because I was bored and I thought it’d be an interesting conversation starter – he didn’t think that was funny.
Up until my wilderness survival class started, getting the burns was the most exciting part of my whole day – now after my survival class I have to say hands down it’s getting my knife.
My wilderness survival class started today – it’s a second block class, the time’s not great but it works. In class today we were discussing the rule of 3’s/4’s. Basically, you can survive 3-4 minutes without air, 3-4 hours without shelter, 36 hours at 40 degrees, 3-4 days without water, about 3 weeks or 40 days without food and 4 days at -40 degrees without fire, it takes about 3-4 days to acclimatize, and typically within 3-4 days you’re rescued. My teacher said that either you make a change and adapt or you don’t, at which point you become a statistic because you’ll have died and that giving up will kill you faster than anything. He also said that the typical time it takes to be rescued is 48-72 hours, you’ll be dead within the first 36 hours by environmental factors unless you do something constructive, about the time you hit 24 hours is about the time you start panicking and the first 6 hours determines everything that happens after that point – you’ll either lay down and die or you’ll do something constructive, it all comes down to how strong your will to survive is. On that delightful note he told us about a three day, two night camping trip we’ll be going on in mid November. And we all got knifes – a three inch blade that’s very sharp and very lethal. He told us to bring them to class each time because we’ll be using them all the time but he said we shouldn’t bring them with us during finals week – hmm I wonder why not. Perhaps because we’d be tempted to see just how sharp these knifes are. Wahaha!!!
