Mere days ago Yours Truly was minding her own business.
Actually, minding mine own business is on the diurnal, eternal, to-do list.
I was on an assignment for the BigU and on the docket was this: (paraphrased) Get images (well, of freakin' course) of hazmat drill.
This assignment was like, more or less, the one of yore where YT was on the faux-situ of the BigU's reactor and its drill.
When YT was squatting on the ground to get a photo id of a lady on a stretcher, with light blue eyeshadow rings around both eyes. Excuse me, excuse me until finally she, perhaps slightly exasperated as she was being dragged out or away from her Method Acting as she'd been out of the reactor, said I'm supposed to be DEAD.
So, there YT was on the job.
Directive was the building.
Drill. Building.
YT, with a nice nose for news, sniffed out where the action was, landing right outside a door of a lab.
This lab is where there was a spill.
And the emergency workers were quickly deducing that this spill or disaster or mix-up or melt-down was of the bio-hazard or chemical or cultural variety.
So.
Then.
That's.
When.
The.
Drama.
Started.
The Big U's director of said disasters of the hazmat variety, very clearly revved up about the proceedings, took note of me on my assignment and told me that I was not - NOT - to go inside the lab.
Up in cultural, debacled flames went my previsualizations of images of the firemen, the man in the Kevlar© suit attending to The Victim.
THIS IS A MATTER OF HOMELAND SECURITY, said Mr. Rev, pointing his tense finger at my chest, or at my cam.
I assured him that his pointing and behaviour was not necessary, that I'd been sent there by the very U where we stood.
He said he would take my digital images and I assured him that he would not.
And that I would not make another image of the proceedings in the hallway and would not go into the lab.
That I'd be waiting outdoors for The Victim to be carried to whomever would be waiting to spirit him away to god only knows where.
So this image shows the proceedings before the notion of state of Homeland Security and all was mentioned and then moments later YT photographed The Victim gurneyside.
The fire department had erected two portable scrubbing kiddy pools and, before The Victim arrived on the scene, they left with their pools and metal folding chairs.
I asked a fireman why.
They said that the victim had been tidied up inside the lab.
But the kiddy pools were for the firemen so I presume they got a sprinkle of the detoxing liquid during the drill.
I did ask another fireman what happens to the liquids inside the kiddy pools, of course thinking of Steve Kurtz and the scrubbed-off chems on College at Maryland on the Middling City's west side.
Blank stare.
So YT presumes that the liquid might just get dumped out onto the ground as there's no way to suck up the chems and all, at least during casual inspection.

And another thing.
Obama picked ten supporters to be with him backstage in Denver and YT was like so not chosen.
I was not chosen to dine with him, not for the convention.
Not only would YT have enjoyed making some images during the occasion, but YT has not been to Denver - yet.

Love of backstage past, and future.