Firestorm

Fires continue to rage all over the LA area. Box Canyon, Bell Canyon, and Malibu Canyon are particularly hard hit, but so far the firefighters have been doing an amazing job. Some houses have been lost, but it could be so much worse. Fortunately the winds died down early this evening and that's a great thing. Hopefully they'll finally get these things under control overnight. The 2 big blazes are still at least 20+ miles west of me, but there is a smaller one outside of Burbank that concerns me more. It's still like 20 miles from me, but it's heading east so it's more of a potential threat to me than the others. So I've got a bag packed in the trunk of my car just in case. That whole "better safe than sorry" thing. My housemates have promised to evacuate my dog if anything happens while I'm at work tomorrow, so I feel better about that. I'm not that attached to anything else. If it burns it burns. My insurance company will pay me and I can start over. How it goes sometimes and the idea of losing all my worldly possesions doesn't stress me out nearly as much as it probably should and not nearly as much as it would have a year ago. Call it a shift in my priorities. Sure, I'd miss my books, and my DVDs, and stuff like that, but it's just stuff. I can replace it if I want and most of it I can probably live without. (Too bad I didn't have that little epiphany before I moved and had to pay to ship all this crap out here.) Seriously though, as long as I have my dog, my laptop, and my car, I could get by just fine. (My horse Callie is still in the ATL, so I'm not counting her in my list of "need to haves" in this situation.) On that note, if things are still burning come this weekend, I'm going to try and volunteer with the LA Horse Rescue group. There are a lot of horse owners in these canyons and many of them don't have horse trailers and need help evacuating. Some of the big boarding stables have 100's of horses at them and getting them all moved to safety can be a major undertaking. I don't have a truck and trailer, but I can still ride shotgun, help load horses, etc. Eventually Callie will be out here and I'd like to think that if I need to get her out of harm's way, someone will be there to help me, ya know? So anyway, just wanted to let everyone out there in blogland know that all is well here in my little canyon and that I've managed to avoid the fires thus far. If the winds shift though, I'll be sure to let you know...

"Remember in elementary school you were told that in case of fire you have to line up quietly in a single file from smallest to tallest? What is the logic in that? What, do tall people burn slower?" -- Warren Hutcherson